The nature of using design systems (Design ops I)

Published in

Bootcamp

3 min readMay 15, 2022

Good ideas are pervasive and spread across several different businesses in a way we can’t expect. An example of this happens in the last years in the field of UX, where little by little, we adopt practices that have success in the field of it and embrace it into the reality of UX practice.

An example of this is agile and lean practices, but I want to look at the dev-ops today. We call it design ops.

Design Ops

Same as the concept in DEV OPS, Design Ops aims to achieve operationalization and optimization of the design processes. Operationalization means that design ops teams seek to identify or build the tools that would accelerate the design process and keep the overall quality of the deliveries. One of these tools is the design systems.

A sound design system provides:

a collection of design building blocks that have a direct counterpart in a development building block
set of recommendations (do’s and do nots) for both designers and developers
a set of accelerators (templates) that contemplate the most expected design scenarios
a team supporting its evolution
Connects the design system team to using project teams to support adoption and mine for newer solutions.

The nature of using design systems

In my experience, design systems took too seriously, and the management teams try to have a 100% adoption approach, forcing design teams to do so.

These types of decisions are often detrimental to the final quality of the product because:

it stifles creativity and by so any chance of innovation
Creating a solution with a limited set of pieces may result in design system-compliant solutions that don’t answer the user’s needs.

Am I advocating not to use design systems! Not at all. Let me explain.

Design Systems, in their essence, strive to be a guiding light and a box of pieces that help the designer improve delivery times.

Using a design system

Having that concept of the design system in mind, I believe that the design system gives us:

A design language to frame whatever we need to do and a set of guidelines to evolve the design language depending on the need.
gives already premade blocks for standard interface elements (forms elements, text blocks, etc.)

We need to consider that the context that designers face during the construction of the design system might not be the same as you are facing on your project.

Being so, you can consider that 80% of the needs of your project will have answers in the design system blocks, and the design system provides direction to innovate on 20% of the remaining requirements.

Wrapping up

Design systems are a sound strategy for your design ops operation to provide faster design and developer delivery and overall quality. As a result, designers and devs can focus more on innovation and less on everyday interactions ensured by the design system blocks.