In the olden days, a UI designer would create a loose interpretation of the basics. An overview of colours, fonts, buttons, and possibly and the style of icons and it would be saved away on a hard-drive, only ever to be opened when being sent to external agencies who need a glance at a visual direction for an upcoming project, or new starters to the design team, but it is very rarely held much importance to the actual in-house designers using it.

The main wealth of knowledge was generally lodged firmly at the forefront of the designer’s brain. This would mean a constant barrage of issues around trying to remember if a certain visual pattern was used before somewhere. This, 9 times out of 10, would end up in a chaotic mess of inconsistency.

In recent years, the styleguide has been given a refresh, and with the introduction of the concept of a Design System, or a Design Language. With this, comes a whole new approach that can epically effect how a product team approaches design as a whole.

With a solid, consistent, well explained and thought out system, the visual aspect of creating a design becomes totally modular. Products such as Craft by Invision or Brand.ai have made the visual design phase almost drag and drop to a certain extent.

Creating safety in the knowledge that the elements you’re using are consistent with every other designer on the team. They remove any animosity from the visual design phase, almost to a level where creating low-fidelity prototypes are a thing of the past.

“Styles come and go. Good design is a language, not a style.” – Massimo Vignelli

I’m not going to use this article as a way to explain how to exactly create a design system. I’ve already written an article around that: Creating a Design System Language. This is more a one-way discussion about how a design team can benefit from investing in a design system.

An introduction to our design system – QUIK

Over the last few years I’ve been heavily involved in creating design systems across various companies, from startups through to well-established organisations. My latest venture has been creating our design system for Qstream.

From very early on in my time at Qstream, I realised how essential it was that we introduced a fresh, working system to our design team as quick as possible. Inconsistencies and poor design choices plagued the product, and as the product and the design team expanded, it was vital to steady the ship and create a language that each designer could totally.

And with that, we began to create our new design system, aptly named QUIK – Qstream User Interface Kit.

Step 1: Inconsistencies

Again, I’m not going to go in too deep for the process as to how we created the system but I’ll give a quick run through as to how we got out of the weeds.

The first thing to do was to do a total audit of the visual components within the product. Brad Frost has put together a great article around how you go about doing a UI audit if you’re interested.

This can be an awful, time consuming, monotonous task, but it is so beneficial. It a) allows you to get a total understanding of where the main inconsistencies lie b) gives you a really good overview of what elements are important and used consistently throughout the product c) gives you a crash course on how exactly the product works and d) allows you to show the wider business the frailties of the existing visual system, and exactly why a new, consistent design system is needed.

A snippet of our UI Audit outlaying the inconsistency across the platforms UI.

Step 2: Creating the Elements

We broke down our system into 3 different entities.

1. Brand – The Brand Identity of a product is made up from key elements that create the visual identity. Colours, typography and iconography are core to any platform.
2. Elements – The Elements are made up of the smallest reusable parts of the system. These elements are constantly recycled across all areas of the system. (Buttons, inputs)
3. Components – A Component is a collection of elements, that are commonly used alongside each other to identify a common pattern within a flow. (Alerts, tables, cards, etc)

The next step is to prioritise, based on the UI audit, what elements are most commonly used across the product. These will be the first areas you tackle first.

Once we identified the key elements for the system, it was time to start creating the style and rules around each area. We tackled colours, typography, spacing and general iconography first before moving onto the more formed elements such as buttons, inputs etc.

A birds eye overview of our whole System to date.

Obviously the deeper the system goes, the less frequent the elements are used, but it’s all part of growing the system and making the overall language as consistent as possible across all aspects of the product.

(We also have another project ongoing around our illustration style but I’ll save that for another article, you can see more around it here)

A sample of our illustrative style used across the platform.

Step 3: Implementation

We’re currently in this phase. To be honest, we’ll probably never move out of this phase. One thing that you’ve got to realise before you take on a challenge like this is that it will never end. You’re developing a product, it’s not a project that will eventually end. It will constantly be evolving and growing.

All you have to do is to take a look at how product teams have restructured to cater for design system teams, many opting for designers solely focused on working directly on their design system, nothing else. The system has become an integral part of a products core. When created properly, a design system creates focus, clarity and confidence and in turn will create consistency across the product and will speed up the turn around of product development. What’s not to love!

“A design system isn’t a project. It’s a product serving products.” – Nathan Curtis

Tying up the Systems

Creating a design system that works across the product is one thing. We’re also in the middle of creating brand guidelines as well as outline our design principles. (Again, more articles to follow regarding our process).

We feel it is key to create a solid foundation across all aspects of design before we move any further as without the proper scaffolding in place, it will cause issues down the line. Creating a solid set of guidelines and principles will help guide us in the correct direction when we start scaling up.

The plan, once we have QUIK to a level that we feel is consumable, is to create a Playbook that will house the key features of our products core personality and entity.

• Brand Guidelines – a set of guidelines that will introduce our brand personality as well as outline key characteristics such as tone of voice, colours, logo constraints etc.
• QUIK – a system brought together to unite our design beliefs and methodologies across our platform in one central place.
• Design Principles – The purpose of the principles is to ensure we stay anchored at all times to what is truly important for Qstream and our customers. They will aid us in making decisions that align with their goals.

Going Forward

We’ll strive to create consistency across our platform. We’ve still a long way to go. Everyone, from all angles of the product team, is fully aware that this is a monstrous challenge, but we’re also equally aware of its importance for the scalability of the product.

The post The Benefits of Creating a Design System appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

But how exactly can a product benefit from having a living, breathing design language? I’m going to try break down the very basics so you can understand why it’s needed.

“Creating an underlaying language will unite our design philosophies and methodologies across our platform.”

So, Why Do We Need a Design Language?

There are two ways of looking at it, from an internal and an external perspective.

Internal:
It creates a holistic perspective to ensure we’re all adhering to the same methodologies and patterns as a team. Every team member should be inline with the concept that we’re promoting and should be able to reference the design principles against any project they are currently working on.
The main goal of a design language is to create focus and clarity for designers. A design language is like any language. If there is any confusion it will cause a breakdown in communication.

External:
Having a cohesive Design Language creates harmony within a platform. For onlookers, standardised colours, interactions and patterns creates a sense of familiarity and security. A well planned and well executed Design Language is the key to a gratifying experience.
For instance, if you walk into a Starbucks in Iceland, you will recognise a lot of similar touches to your local Starbucks down the road. Familiarity brings a sense of comfort and security to the user. Introducing design constraints on individual elements within a platform creates consistency at a higher level.

A successful Design Language will:

• Focus: allow the designer to focus clearly on the project at hand rather then to be diverted by other distractions.
• Clarity: allow the designer to think clearly about our design beliefs as well as the design constraints in place across the platform.
• Confidence: allow the designer to have complete confidence in what they are designing and that it is inline with others in the team.
• Consistency: create consistency across the product which in turn will create a secure, familiar experience across the platform.
• Efficiency: create understanding across the teams, meaning less time consumed concentrating on the less important details.

Basically, if your designers are focused and understand the design language, it will give them confidence, which in turn will help the business at a higher level as it will create consistency and efficiency.

Building the Foundations…

Design Principles

Having solid design principles in place, that the whole team has contributed to, ensures that we’re all adhering to the same methodologies and patterns as a team. Every team member should be inline with the concept that we’re promoting and should be able to reference the design principles against any project they are currently working on.

Tone of Voice

Its important to create a consistent voice for our product. Each designer (or whoever is involved) should be aware of the approach needed when writing content. Having consistent content is a very large part of creating a consistent user experience and all designers should try to align all content accordingly.

Team Values

How do we work together as a team? It’s important that everyone pulls in the same direction and everyone agrees that the chosen values are important to creating a happy working environment.

There are obviously a whole lot more elements you can establish to create a core foundation for your design identity. The above is just the tip of the iceberg. Every company is different so feel free to expand on it as much as you feel is right to explain the methodologies of your approach.

Visual Identity:

Creating the visual identity isn’t something that will be created overnight. It takes time. Sometimes it’s as clear as day as to what is needed, other times it takes time for the building blocks to fall into place.

Once in place, it’s important that the fundamentals are captured and documented at a high level. The likes of use of colour, typography and style of iconography is key to creating consistency across a platform.

• Colours: What is the colour palette used on the platform? Explain how, where and why we use certain colours.
• Typography: What typeface is used on the platform? Summarises rules around weighting, sizing, vertical alignment etc?
• Iconography: What is the generic style for icons? It will explain the rational as to why we have specific styles for different icon families.
• Grid/Layouts: What grid system is used across the platform? Explain the use of the grid and the high level idealism of our layouts.
• Interactions: What do people expect to see when they interact with our site? Give an overview of our standard interactions.
• Animations: How do we approach animations? Explain the reason for animations on the platform and our constraints around using them.
• Design Resources: A central point for assets to be easily downloaded for external partners. Colour swatches, logo’s, icon sets etc.

The Next Steps:

You probably are fully aware of how important a design language is within your platform but saying to yourself ‘where do I start?. This article is pretty high level. Creating a design language goes far, far deeper then what I have identified above. The creation of the styleguide and in turn the development of a component library is the evolution of a design system.

So here is a process that I’ve put together that should help you focus on exactly what is needed to get the ball rolling:

Do a UI Inventory Audit

Before you start anything, its best to identify how inconsistent the current build is. This works in two ways. It helps identify the reason as to why you’re doing it, to identify how inconsistent everything is but it should help you get the backing of the business as to why exactly you’re creating the design system; to create consistency across the platform. Brad Frost has put together a great article around how you go about doing a UI audit.

Prioritise Your UI Elements

Im sure every design team has different priorities with regards what they feel is crucial to creating consistency but there are generally some elements that are critical to creating the basics. The likes of colours, typography and iconography is a great place to start.

Work closely with the design and development team to create a list of priorities based on your UI audit, this should guide your roadmap for the foreseeable future. I’ve found using a Trello board as a way to keep a priority list up to date is a great way of working.

It allows you to 1) create your list and set them in a line of priority i.e what are you going to tackle first and 2) allows you to track exactly how far along you are with each component.

Start Discussions with the Design Team

So now that you’ve identified exactly what you’re going to be tackling first in the priority list, its time to sit down with the design team to get all ideas and opinions out around the first components needed.

There are various approaches as to who owns the design system project, but for this instance I’m going to take the instance that there is one sole designer who is in charge of control of the project.

This means it’s up to you to discuss every aspect of the component with the designers who will, in time, be using the design language. This is extremely important to ensure that the designers all feel as if they have had an input into what is being created.

Document all Instances

Its time to start making some decisions. Document what you are creating, ensuring that you’re catering for all instances needed. Its vital that what you are creating is not a subjective decision.

You have to have rationale as to why you are making these decisions as it will allow you to explain your decisions to the design team down the line.

See if it Works

The next step is to try out your decisions. Its very easy to make decisions on paper but when you are putting them into practice it might turn out that some decisions just don’t work. Try out some examples of the new style using current designs.

Lock it Down

One you are happy with the outcome, and you have buyin from all parties, its time to lock it down and educate the rest of the team as to how and why these elements are to be used. It’s important to remember that although you are locking down the styling, that if you feel certain elements aren’t working, that you can change it if needs be.

Move to the Next Element

Once you have educated the team and are comfortable in the knowledge that the designers are respecting your decisions, its time to move onto the next set of elements. Its up to you as to how many elements you take at a time, but you should never bite off too much.

It will just distract you from really focusing on the smaller details. My starting preference would be – Colours, typography // Icons, input fields // Tables, Lists // etc.

Once everyone is educated as to what the new style is, its important that all designer and developers are implementing the styles properly.
Weekly checkins are vital to monitor the style choices to ensure that everyone is working off the same design decisions. Using products such as Craft by Invision really help bring consistency when moving forward.

How to Gauge Success:

“The Design Language is not a success until the company starts using it and finding value in it.”

Examples of Design Languages:

• https://www.ibm.com/design/language/framework
• https://www.lightningdesignsystem.com/
• https://design.atlassian.com/
• https://material.google.com/
• https://ux.mailchimp.com/patterns
• https://standards.usa.gov/

Also, here is a case study that I created for a recent design overhaul that I was involved in: Ryanair Design Centre.

“The biggest existential threat to any system is neglect” – Alex Schleifer, VP of Design at Airbnb

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