net - UK (2020-03)

O Introduce updates. The waiting
time for updates plays a key role in
the adoption of the design system.
Practise regular incremental releases,
rather than big reveals and always
ensure you ship updates with a
changelog.

Analyse how people use the
design system
Design systems rise and fall based on
how easy they are to use. If you’ve just
started incorporating a design system
into your organisation’s design process,
conduct a series of interviews with users
to understand how people use it. By
doing that, you can pinpoint common
problems that your target audience may
be facing.
For systems that will be incorporated
in a design process for some time, it’s
essential to measure the time required
to keep the system up to date. If keeping

the design system updated becomes

difficult, it will quickly become outdated.

Test your design decisions

No matter how good you are at

predicting things, it can be hard to

predict how a particular change will

affect the user experience. That’s why

it’s important to validate your decisions.

Here are three types of testing that

will help you:

O Usability testing.

O Visual regression testing, which

helps you to catch unintended visual

changes to component styles.

O Manual and automated accessibility

testing, which ensures your

components are accessible.

Introduce versioning

Design systems should have versions

because versioning makes it much

easier to track changes. With versioned

releases, users can reference a specific

version as a dependency. They also have

control over when and how upgrades to

new versions are handled.

There are two types of versioning:

O Versioning the entire system. Here,

everything in the system belongs to

one version number. As users, we deal

with versioning for the whole system

when we update our mobile OS – when

we update iOS, we’re updating the

entire piece of software.

O Versioning by modules. This involves

having a version number for every

component or style within the design

system. Compared with versioning the

entire system, versioning by module

gives more flexibility – users can

choose to upgrade just the elements

they need.

Creating a design system is not a one-

time activity; it’s actually iterative.

The people involved in creating a

design system need to think of it as

a living organism connecting the

whole organisation. A successful

design system becomes part of an

organisation’s DNA and helps produce

consistent user experiences.

Successful design systems

are highly reusable; libraries

like Bootstrap show these

components in action

Build a perfect design system