Is a design system a product?

It seems that people are very often confusing a Design System with a component library. The differences are nuanced, drawing the line between those two will be hard, and there’s no right or wrong — but maybe this story might help us understand those differences a little bit better, and maybe it will help us understand the effort it takes to build and maintain a Design System.

It is more than just a UI Library. The whole purpose of a Design System is to define the design principles, style guide, patterns, content tone, and the rules and specifications of the “reusable” components. These rules are very specific to the product and can differ from company to company.

When does a UI library turn into a design system?

For a design system to thrive and survive, it needs a sufficient level of management:

• Who’s making the decisions? Modern design systems have a product manager who’s driving decisions, assertively aligning with partners, and serving as the go-to person.
• Who’s doing the work? Sustaining a design system can involve a significant amount of design, development, writing, and other work done by people committed (at least partially, > 4hr/week) to the endeavour.
• Who’s paying for it? It’s near impossible for a system to survive long-term without a sponsor deliberately providing a budget in the form of properly allocated time.
• What are each of you working on right now, and where do you record and prioritise things you might work on later? Yup, time for task management, which many high-performing teams increasingly formalise into a backlog over sprints using tools like Trello and Jira.
• What can your customers (products using the system) expect over the next 6–12 months? Don’t discount the power of an effective, concisely communicated system roadmap. It generates awareness, discussion, faith that you’ve got your act together, and trust that what you do provides for what they need. 

A Design System isn’t a Project. It’s a Product, Serving Products.

Discuss!

All this and more are answered in this episode of Faster Horses.

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Produced by:

Paul Wilshaw

Nick Tomlinson

Mark Sutcliffe

Anthony Jones

Chris Sutcliffe

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All this and more are answered in this episode of Faster Horses, a podcast about UX, UXR, UI design, products and technology (sometimes!)

🐎 80% comedy, 20% UX, 0% filler

👕 Get stickers and tees at https://www.paulwilshaw.com/shop/

The show is hosted by:
Paul Wilshaw
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulwilshaw/
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Mark Sutcliffe
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