Design: Design Systems

The use of design systems is becoming increasingly prominent today, especially for user-interface (UI) design. What is the reason for this? Design systems let designers structure their design workflows, communicate design-related decisions to their team members, and build consistent, reusable UI elements. Let’s begin by looking at the basics of a design system.

What Is a Design System?

A design system is a repository of reusable UI components. Using a design system, you can define UI elements such as navigation bars, buttons, text blocks, and dialog boxes that you can use repeatedly, throughout your UI designs. Consequently, a design system facilitates an easy design workflow. Read More

“Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.”—Steve Jobs

With the emergence of Node-based technologies such as React and Angular have come new opportunities for both UX designers and developers to leverage design systems to enhance their application user experiences. This article aims to help those of you who are weighing the advantages and disadvantages of using design systems and component libraries for your application.

Consider the scenario of a Web application that is being designed using a Material Design style, which could be built to specifications for one device, serving one operation, or could perform significantly differently under other conditions, in another context. When you consider the variances in how user interactions function, the value of leveraging a design system starts to pay returns as front-end development teams build out component libraries at scale, yet performance teams may also find variances in the user experience that are worth researching. Read More

As a product designer, I’ve experienced firsthand how rigid design systems can impede innovation and limit creative problem-solving. In this article, I’ll explore how rethinking design systems as evolving products—rather than fixed libraries—can transform the way designers work. When designers take ownership of a design system, they become active contributors to its growth. By validating new design ideas through experimentation and partnering closely with cross-functional teams, designers can ensure that the system continues to serve both business objectives and customers’ needs. This shift in mindset reduces bottlenecks, fosters innovation, and enables the creation of user experiences that truly adapt to an ever-changing technology industry.

Working as a product designer in technology requires that I interact with design systems daily. Early in my career, I viewed a design system as a static library—a convenient collection of components to drag into my design file and use as necessary. Similarly, when I needed design guidance, I treated the system as a reference book, consulting it for rules to ensure that I adhered to established standards. While this approach often worked, it wasn’t foolproof. There were moments of frustration when I wasn’t able to find the component I needed or the guidance necessary to meet my design objectives. Such moments of anxiety often led to compromises—either I would abandon my original idea and look for alternative solutions within the system or I would find myself limited by the system’s constraints, unable to craft something unique and truly user centered. Read More