Introduction: The Power of Design Systems in Scaling Product Development
Dec 9, 2024
Introduction: The Power of Design Systems in Scaling Product Development
In a rapidly evolving product development environment, maintaining consistency across different teams and workflows becomes increasingly challenging. A design system is a tool that can help standardize and scale the product development lifecycle. By providing a unified framework for design, interaction patterns, and code components, a design system ensures that all teams—design, development, and product management—are on the same page.
A great example of this can be seen with Bigeye’s FAST design system. It allows designers and developers to work from the same source of truth, streamlining the entire design-to-development workflow. Having a clear design system like this also accelerates the onboarding process for new team members and improves collaboration across different squads.
What is a Design System? A Quick Overview
At its core, a design system is a collection of reusable components, patterns, and guidelines. It encompasses visual elements (colors, typography, icons), UI components (buttons, form fields, navigation), and interaction patterns that define how the product behaves.
Bigeye’s FAST system, for example, integrates a unified design and component library that developers and designers across multiple teams can access. This system not only improves design consistency but also allows different teams to scale their workflows without constantly reinventing the wheel.
A design system can range from something simple—like a set of color and typography guidelines—to a complex, interactive library of UI components, complete with behavior and state definitions. When teams consistently use the system, it significantly reduces the chance of errors and inconsistencies as products grow.
Why Standardize and Scale Your Product Development Lifecycle?
Standardizing the product development lifecycle can help resolve a range of issues that arise during rapid scaling. Without a standard process, design and development teams might create mismatched user interfaces, resulting in a disjointed experience for the end user.
For instance, in the Bigeye FAST process, each squad works from a common component library stored in Storybook, a tool that provides a living, interactive documentation of UI components. By using pre-existing components from Storybook instead of building new ones from scratch, the team ensures a uniform look and feel across the platform, cutting down the time spent on custom design work.
The goal is not just to create a product faster, but to ensure that every part of the product feels like it’s from the same universe, providing users with a seamless experience.
Slow Down to Speed Up: Taking Time to Build the Parts of Your Design System
When scaling a design system, it’s crucial to slow down and invest time upfront in building out its core components. If you rush through this process, you might face inconsistencies and quality issues as the system expands.
For example, with Bigeye’s FAST system, the design team took time to audit every component and ensure that it’s aligned across different platforms. From typography consistency to component interaction behaviors (e.g., how buttons appear when hovered), Bigeye focused on making sure everything worked seamlessly across the product.
The key takeaway here is that a design system isn’t just a collection of components—it’s a robust framework that requires attention to detail. By focusing on creating detailed specifications and documentation upfront, teams can avoid having to go back and fix issues later on, saving time in the long run.
Writing Technical and Interaction Acceptance Requirements for Your Design System
Writing clear technical requirements and interaction acceptance criteria is a critical part of any successful design system. This ensures that both the design and development teams have a shared understanding of how components should behave.
Take the GroupBy/FilterBy feature in Bigeye, for example. The feature comes with specific acceptance criteria that define how the interface should behave under different scenarios, such as what happens when a user interacts with the filter panel or how the layout adjusts when the user selects different options. These criteria are shared across the team, ensuring that there is no ambiguity during development.
For the development teams, this detailed documentation is like a roadmap that ensures the features are built as intended. For designers, it helps in making sure that the product behaves in the way it was originally envisioned.
Storybook: Documenting and Showcasing Your Design Components
Storybook is a valuable tool for documenting design components in an interactive way. It provides a centralized location where developers and designers can see components in isolation, interact with them, and understand how they are supposed to function.
Bigeye uses Storybook to display components like the actions menu or checkboxes, showcasing their behavior and usage across the product. By referencing the same components in Storybook, both developers and designers ensure that they are aligned in their understanding of how components should behave and look.
In addition to improving collaboration, Storybook serves as a living document—whenever new components are added or updated, the system reflects those changes immediately, ensuring that everyone is working with the most current version of the design.
Best Practices for Keeping Your Design System Scalable and Maintainable
Maintaining a design system requires ongoing effort to ensure that it remains scalable as the product evolves. Regular updates, consistent feedback loops, and collaboration between teams are key to keeping the system alive and relevant.
For example, Bigeye has created a feedback loop between design and engineering teams to constantly iterate on and improve the FAST system. Whether it’s a new component or an updated design rule, the teams work closely together to ensure that changes are reflected in both the design and code.
Version control is another important consideration. With multiple teams using the same components, it’s crucial to ensure that changes are tracked and managed properly, preventing conflicts between teams. Tools like Figma and Storybook allow for easy version tracking and collaboration on updates, making it easier to manage even as the product grows.
Overcoming Challenges in Implementing Design Systems at Scale
One of the biggest challenges when scaling a design system is ensuring consistent adoption across teams. This is where clear documentation and education come into play. Without these, some teams might revert to old habits and ignore the system altogether.
Bigeye’s solution was to make their design system, FAST, a part of their daily workflows by integrating it into both design tools like Figma and engineering tools like Storybook. Regular workshops and feedback sessions ensured that all teams were up-to-date with new components and best practices, fostering a culture of collaboration.
Conclusion: Design Systems as a Long-Term Investment in Efficiency and Quality
A well-defined design system isn’t just a tool—it’s an investment that pays off in the long term by enhancing consistency, collaboration, and speed. It requires upfront effort, but that effort makes the scaling process smoother, ensuring that both design and development teams can work more efficiently.
Introduction: The Power of Design Systems in Scaling Product Development
In a rapidly evolving product development environment, maintaining consistency across different teams and workflows becomes increasingly challenging. A design system is a tool that can help standardize and scale the product development lifecycle. By providing a unified framework for design, interaction patterns, and code components, a design system ensures that all teams—design, development, and product management—are on the same page.
A great example of this can be seen with Bigeye’s FAST design system. It allows designers and developers to work from the same source of truth, streamlining the entire design-to-development workflow. Having a clear design system like this also accelerates the onboarding process for new team members and improves collaboration across different squads.
What is a Design System? A Quick Overview
At its core, a design system is a collection of reusable components, patterns, and guidelines. It encompasses visual elements (colors, typography, icons), UI components (buttons, form fields, navigation), and interaction patterns that define how the product behaves.
Bigeye’s FAST system, for example, integrates a unified design and component library that developers and designers across multiple teams can access. This system not only improves design consistency but also allows different teams to scale their workflows without constantly reinventing the wheel.
A design system can range from something simple—like a set of color and typography guidelines—to a complex, interactive library of UI components, complete with behavior and state definitions. When teams consistently use the system, it significantly reduces the chance of errors and inconsistencies as products grow.
Why Standardize and Scale Your Product Development Lifecycle?
Standardizing the product development lifecycle can help resolve a range of issues that arise during rapid scaling. Without a standard process, design and development teams might create mismatched user interfaces, resulting in a disjointed experience for the end user.
For instance, in the Bigeye FAST process, each squad works from a common component library stored in Storybook, a tool that provides a living, interactive documentation of UI components. By using pre-existing components from Storybook instead of building new ones from scratch, the team ensures a uniform look and feel across the platform, cutting down the time spent on custom design work.
The goal is not just to create a product faster, but to ensure that every part of the product feels like it’s from the same universe, providing users with a seamless experience.
Slow Down to Speed Up: Taking Time to Build the Parts of Your Design System
When scaling a design system, it’s crucial to slow down and invest time upfront in building out its core components. If you rush through this process, you might face inconsistencies and quality issues as the system expands.
For example, with Bigeye’s FAST system, the design team took time to audit every component and ensure that it’s aligned across different platforms. From typography consistency to component interaction behaviors (e.g., how buttons appear when hovered), Bigeye focused on making sure everything worked seamlessly across the product.
The key takeaway here is that a design system isn’t just a collection of components—it’s a robust framework that requires attention to detail. By focusing on creating detailed specifications and documentation upfront, teams can avoid having to go back and fix issues later on, saving time in the long run.
Writing Technical and Interaction Acceptance Requirements for Your Design System
Writing clear technical requirements and interaction acceptance criteria is a critical part of any successful design system. This ensures that both the design and development teams have a shared understanding of how components should behave.
Take the GroupBy/FilterBy feature in Bigeye, for example. The feature comes with specific acceptance criteria that define how the interface should behave under different scenarios, such as what happens when a user interacts with the filter panel or how the layout adjusts when the user selects different options. These criteria are shared across the team, ensuring that there is no ambiguity during development.
For the development teams, this detailed documentation is like a roadmap that ensures the features are built as intended. For designers, it helps in making sure that the product behaves in the way it was originally envisioned.
Storybook: Documenting and Showcasing Your Design Components
Storybook is a valuable tool for documenting design components in an interactive way. It provides a centralized location where developers and designers can see components in isolation, interact with them, and understand how they are supposed to function.
Bigeye uses Storybook to display components like the actions menu or checkboxes, showcasing their behavior and usage across the product. By referencing the same components in Storybook, both developers and designers ensure that they are aligned in their understanding of how components should behave and look.
In addition to improving collaboration, Storybook serves as a living document—whenever new components are added or updated, the system reflects those changes immediately, ensuring that everyone is working with the most current version of the design.
Best Practices for Keeping Your Design System Scalable and Maintainable
Maintaining a design system requires ongoing effort to ensure that it remains scalable as the product evolves. Regular updates, consistent feedback loops, and collaboration between teams are key to keeping the system alive and relevant.
For example, Bigeye has created a feedback loop between design and engineering teams to constantly iterate on and improve the FAST system. Whether it’s a new component or an updated design rule, the teams work closely together to ensure that changes are reflected in both the design and code.
Version control is another important consideration. With multiple teams using the same components, it’s crucial to ensure that changes are tracked and managed properly, preventing conflicts between teams. Tools like Figma and Storybook allow for easy version tracking and collaboration on updates, making it easier to manage even as the product grows.
Overcoming Challenges in Implementing Design Systems at Scale
One of the biggest challenges when scaling a design system is ensuring consistent adoption across teams. This is where clear documentation and education come into play. Without these, some teams might revert to old habits and ignore the system altogether.
Bigeye’s solution was to make their design system, FAST, a part of their daily workflows by integrating it into both design tools like Figma and engineering tools like Storybook. Regular workshops and feedback sessions ensured that all teams were up-to-date with new components and best practices, fostering a culture of collaboration.
Conclusion: Design Systems as a Long-Term Investment in Efficiency and Quality
A well-defined design system isn’t just a tool—it’s an investment that pays off in the long term by enhancing consistency, collaboration, and speed. It requires upfront effort, but that effort makes the scaling process smoother, ensuring that both design and development teams can work more efficiently.
Introduction: The Power of Design Systems in Scaling Product Development
In a rapidly evolving product development environment, maintaining consistency across different teams and workflows becomes increasingly challenging. A design system is a tool that can help standardize and scale the product development lifecycle. By providing a unified framework for design, interaction patterns, and code components, a design system ensures that all teams—design, development, and product management—are on the same page.
A great example of this can be seen with Bigeye’s FAST design system. It allows designers and developers to work from the same source of truth, streamlining the entire design-to-development workflow. Having a clear design system like this also accelerates the onboarding process for new team members and improves collaboration across different squads.
What is a Design System? A Quick Overview
At its core, a design system is a collection of reusable components, patterns, and guidelines. It encompasses visual elements (colors, typography, icons), UI components (buttons, form fields, navigation), and interaction patterns that define how the product behaves.
Bigeye’s FAST system, for example, integrates a unified design and component library that developers and designers across multiple teams can access. This system not only improves design consistency but also allows different teams to scale their workflows without constantly reinventing the wheel.
A design system can range from something simple—like a set of color and typography guidelines—to a complex, interactive library of UI components, complete with behavior and state definitions. When teams consistently use the system, it significantly reduces the chance of errors and inconsistencies as products grow.
Why Standardize and Scale Your Product Development Lifecycle?
Standardizing the product development lifecycle can help resolve a range of issues that arise during rapid scaling. Without a standard process, design and development teams might create mismatched user interfaces, resulting in a disjointed experience for the end user.
For instance, in the Bigeye FAST process, each squad works from a common component library stored in Storybook, a tool that provides a living, interactive documentation of UI components. By using pre-existing components from Storybook instead of building new ones from scratch, the team ensures a uniform look and feel across the platform, cutting down the time spent on custom design work.
The goal is not just to create a product faster, but to ensure that every part of the product feels like it’s from the same universe, providing users with a seamless experience.
Slow Down to Speed Up: Taking Time to Build the Parts of Your Design System
When scaling a design system, it’s crucial to slow down and invest time upfront in building out its core components. If you rush through this process, you might face inconsistencies and quality issues as the system expands.
For example, with Bigeye’s FAST system, the design team took time to audit every component and ensure that it’s aligned across different platforms. From typography consistency to component interaction behaviors (e.g., how buttons appear when hovered), Bigeye focused on making sure everything worked seamlessly across the product.
The key takeaway here is that a design system isn’t just a collection of components—it’s a robust framework that requires attention to detail. By focusing on creating detailed specifications and documentation upfront, teams can avoid having to go back and fix issues later on, saving time in the long run.
Writing Technical and Interaction Acceptance Requirements for Your Design System
Writing clear technical requirements and interaction acceptance criteria is a critical part of any successful design system. This ensures that both the design and development teams have a shared understanding of how components should behave.
Take the GroupBy/FilterBy feature in Bigeye, for example. The feature comes with specific acceptance criteria that define how the interface should behave under different scenarios, such as what happens when a user interacts with the filter panel or how the layout adjusts when the user selects different options. These criteria are shared across the team, ensuring that there is no ambiguity during development.
For the development teams, this detailed documentation is like a roadmap that ensures the features are built as intended. For designers, it helps in making sure that the product behaves in the way it was originally envisioned.
Storybook: Documenting and Showcasing Your Design Components
Storybook is a valuable tool for documenting design components in an interactive way. It provides a centralized location where developers and designers can see components in isolation, interact with them, and understand how they are supposed to function.
Bigeye uses Storybook to display components like the actions menu or checkboxes, showcasing their behavior and usage across the product. By referencing the same components in Storybook, both developers and designers ensure that they are aligned in their understanding of how components should behave and look.
In addition to improving collaboration, Storybook serves as a living document—whenever new components are added or updated, the system reflects those changes immediately, ensuring that everyone is working with the most current version of the design.
Best Practices for Keeping Your Design System Scalable and Maintainable
Maintaining a design system requires ongoing effort to ensure that it remains scalable as the product evolves. Regular updates, consistent feedback loops, and collaboration between teams are key to keeping the system alive and relevant.
For example, Bigeye has created a feedback loop between design and engineering teams to constantly iterate on and improve the FAST system. Whether it’s a new component or an updated design rule, the teams work closely together to ensure that changes are reflected in both the design and code.
Version control is another important consideration. With multiple teams using the same components, it’s crucial to ensure that changes are tracked and managed properly, preventing conflicts between teams. Tools like Figma and Storybook allow for easy version tracking and collaboration on updates, making it easier to manage even as the product grows.
Overcoming Challenges in Implementing Design Systems at Scale
One of the biggest challenges when scaling a design system is ensuring consistent adoption across teams. This is where clear documentation and education come into play. Without these, some teams might revert to old habits and ignore the system altogether.
Bigeye’s solution was to make their design system, FAST, a part of their daily workflows by integrating it into both design tools like Figma and engineering tools like Storybook. Regular workshops and feedback sessions ensured that all teams were up-to-date with new components and best practices, fostering a culture of collaboration.
Conclusion: Design Systems as a Long-Term Investment in Efficiency and Quality
A well-defined design system isn’t just a tool—it’s an investment that pays off in the long term by enhancing consistency, collaboration, and speed. It requires upfront effort, but that effort makes the scaling process smoother, ensuring that both design and development teams can work more efficiently.
