15 Oct 2024
Why (and how) you need to fix the foundation to build better digital products
Fail-fast is how you start. A design system is how you stop the product falling over when you scale.
It is hard to find a business that does not rely on digital interfaces. Brick-and-mortar still runs on software. Getting the interface right is still damn hard.
Nielsen Norman Group’s research is the usual reminder: good UX raises satisfaction and conversion; poor UX gets you abandonment. Most products do not launch as a finished, loved interface. They start as a small team, a solo developer, or a framework that got the idea off the ground.
Fail fast, then the mess
That is fine in a start-up. You iterate or you die. At scale-up, the same habit produces inconsistent design and a pile of tech debt. Eric Ries popularised fail-fast for a reason. At some point you have to fix the foundation or you slow your own growth.
It takes a village. If you are lucky that is a product manager, engineers, and a designer as the product trio Melissa Perri describes. Often people wear more than one hat. Engineers design. Product managers do UX. Designers set the styles engineers will live with. It is already collaborative. It is rarely systematic.
Design systems as digital transformation for UI
Forget the word “design” for a minute. People hear surface. A design system is how you make the product consistent, scalable, and cheap to change — which is a developer problem, a designer problem, a PM problem, and a finance problem. Finance, because an unexamined platform leaks money in maintenance and rework.
This is part 1 of a short series. Part 2 is about whether now is the right time to pause and do the assessment.
Originally published on Medium.