Design Systems are a progressively popular tool among UX Designers. It’s like designing a house, any time we want to add or change something in it our thoughts immediately go to how it would look and how we would have to rearrange the furniture to fit.
You decide you are ready for an upgrade and that you are going to build the mansion of your dreams! You start with one room. You love that room so much that when you decide it is time for another, bigger room, you simply just rebuild the same one right next door… then something strange happens.
In construction, you wouldn’t build a house with different types of bricks and materials. It just wouldn’t work, right? You’d need a consistent design. Well, the same thing can happen with apps or websites when you don’t have a consistent design. That’s where Design Systems come in. A Design System is like a blueprint for your entire product’s design—a single source of truth that ensures everything looks and feels consistent, no matter how big your app or website gets.
If you're a beginner and new to development, don’t worry! I’ll explain everything you need to know about Design Systems, why they matter, and how they work—all in simple terms. Ready? Let’s get started!
What is a Design System?
A design system is a series of style guides, documents, and resources in a product that encapsulate the different design elements, patterns, and rules in order to unify user interface (UI) development. Think of design systems as a kind of recipe book, but for making your app's design: once you know the sauces (colors), vegetables (buttons), and spices (fonts) used in the recipes, just mix-and-match them well together throughout.
Put slightly more technically:
A Design System is like your 🧰toolbox for everything you need when planning and creating an application or website. Don't make everything from scratch each time — get some ready-made tools (e.g. buttons) and ingredients from your toolbox; you know they will always fit perfectly with each other.
Why Do We Need a Design System?
You’re making a website. The homepage has one style of button (blue, square, and small), the login page has another button (red, round, and large), and the settings page has an entirely different one (green, rectangular, and medium). No wonder it’s hard for people to use your app –– it looks like a mess! A design system makes sure everything is consistent, on every page and touchpoint.
Why this matters:
- Consistency: Every component (buttons, forms, colors) on an app or website works the same way.
- Speed: Developers do not need to re-build UI components each time but use ready-components from a system.
- Scalability: When your app grows, it’s much easier to keep a consistent look, because of the design system that tells you how to build new things.
- Collaboration: Designers, developers, product teams - all of them can be more productive when speaking the same language.
Components of a Design System
A design system consist of several parts, each have different responsibility in order to be able to build user interface that coherent and consistent. Let’s get to know them betters, here are the most important ones::
1. Color Palette
Color palettes determine the main brand colors - primary colors, as well as, the colors used for things such as backgrounds or highlights - secondary colors, in your app/website.
Example:
In a design system, you could do:
- Primary color: #0066FF (used for buttons or links).
- Secondary color: #F4F4F4 (used for backgrounds).
- Accent color: #FF9900 (used for highlights or warnings).
Each page will use the predefined font for the content. In the end, we get a consistent look and feel by removing some decisions.
2. Typography (Fonts)
Typography includes everything from the fonts you choose and how they impact readability to the sizes of different headings and other pieces of typography.
In a design system, you could have something like:
- Heading font: Helvetica, 24px, Bold.
- Body text: Arial, 16px, Regular.
- Captions: Arial, 12px, Italic.
By using predefined font styles, you can ensure that text is readable and looks great on your app.
3. Components
Components are those reusable UI elements which you can use in different pages or your app. They are like the building blocks with which you construct a page/feature.
Example:
Some typical parts of a design system actually are:
- Buttons – Designed buttons you can use in forms, navigation or calls to action.
- Form fields: Reusable text inputs, dropdowns and checkboxes for the users input.
- Icons: A collection of icons to perform actions like save, delete or edit.
- Navigation menus: Pre-built menu bars or sidebars for navigating the app.
Each component is fully designed and coded, so you don’t need to start from scratch every time you want to add a button or a form to a page.
4. Spacing and Layout
The spacing and layout guidelines introduce you how the elements are organised in the page, which contains margin (the space out of an element), padding(the space inner of an element) and the grid system as a whole for layout.
Example:
In a design system, you might define:
- Margin: 16px between elements.
- Padding: 8px within elements.
- Grid system: A 12-column grid which contains content placements in larger viewports.
These guidelines available in the form of structure and help to make
sure all the elements of a page are spaced properly and look balanced to the user.
5. Interaction Patterns
Interaction patterns detail how users are meant to interact with various elements in your app. This includes the behavior of buttons when clicked, the visual display of form fields when focused, and how an error message is shown.
Example:
What a design system will do:
- Hover state: Button will be in darker shade if user will hover it.
- Error message: Red text with warning icon will appear below the form field, if there's an error.
Users should know what to expect when they interact with you app and this can only happen if you have consistent interaction patterns.
How Do You Build a Design System?
Building a design system isn’t something you do overnight. It takes careful planning, collaboration between designers and developers, and a solid understanding of what your product needs.
Step-by-Step Process for Building a Design System:
- Audit Your Existing Designs: Look at your current app or website. What UI elements are you already using? Are there inconsistencies between different pages?
- Define the Core Elements: First, define your app’s colors, typography, and spacing which are generic enough to be used in different part of the application as well follow your brand identity.
- Create Reusable Components: Based on core UI element (like buttons, forms, navigation) create component which you ca reuse as per given guidelines.
- Document Everything: Documentation is important for a design system. It tells designers, developers, and anyone else how to use the design system.
- Test and Iterate: A design system isn’t a one time thing or a project that you complete and move on from. It needs to grow with your app. Test your components, get feedback from your team, iterate them.
Challenges of Building a Design System
Building a design system can be challenging, especially if you're working with a team or on a growing product. Here are some common challenges and how to overcome them:
- Keeping It Up to Date: As your product evolves, new features will be added. It’s important to keep the design system updated to reflect these changes.
Solution: Assign a team or individual who will be responsible for maintining and updating the design system regularly.
- Team Adoption: There can be times when team members won’t use the design system and will keep creating custom components.
Solution: Explain your team members that using the design system would make their lives easier, as they wont have to reinvent the wheel every time & users always get familiar with things faster if they follow a consistent pattern.
- Too Rigid: If a design system is too rigid, it can stifle creativity and make it harder to adapt to new requirements.
Solution: Make sure your design system is flexible and allows for customization when necessary.
Benefits of Using a Design System
Here are a few benefits of using design systems in development:
- Efficiency - Developers can easily re-use already made components which leads to faster building time.
- Consistency: By following the same patterns and design, the user navigation will become familiar and easier to use.
- Scalability: You can easily grow your app or website, patterns that you learn in one page/future could be used in another.
- Collaboration – Designers and developers use the same jargon, tools, and patterns.
Example: The Story of Airbnb’s Design System
One of the most well-known design systems is Airbnb’s “Design Language System” (DLS). As Airbnb’s product grew, the design team noticed that different parts of the app were using their own versions of certain UI components, which caused confusion for users and slowed down developers. To combat this, they decided to build a design system in order to have one coherent UI across the web and mobile.
Guess what happened next? Airbnb’s design system created a way more consistent experience for users and a way more efficient way for engineers to build new features without worrying about how it affects other parts of there app. Not only that, but their design system also gives them power to scale their product as fast as they are on boarding new users.
Conclusion:
Why You Should Start Thinking About Design Systems
If you’re just starting out in development, knowing what design systems are will save you from the beginning a better and more consistent product. It doesn’t matter if it’s a small app or a big project with others people, it maintains all together: same colors, same way to use your app.
So define first everything that is essential (colors, fonts, buttons). Then make it evolves with your product like we said before. You’ll be faster over time instead.
I hope this guide gave you a clear understanding of what Design Systems are and why they’re important! Whether you're a beginner or already working on a project, building a design system can take your product to the next level. Stay tuned for more posts. See you next time!
great!