How UX Team Empowers Software Development with Design Systems

Our UX design process touches many departments, and we need to collaborate effectively with all of them to ensure the product is a success. From my perspective, as a UX Specialist it has never been more important to innovate, and that often means designing new products and features for our clients. When multiple people engage in the same design pursuit, common questions emerge and we might get design inconsistency.

This is why in Idego we get the UI/UX designers involved with innovation work. We, as a team, understand what true collaboration means, that all people involved in the project are sharing the responsibility to build a quality product. We do research and build design systems. It serves as the foundation of our creative work.

Design systems include the resources to create a consistent user interface for any software application. Specifically, they help to document and share design projects, tools, patterns and components libraries. Rather than focusing on which elements to use, where to place them, and how to implement designs, developers can focus on application logic.

A design system is a living style guide which serves as a patterns guideline for color palettes, typography, iconography, layout, accessibility and writing style, and a library of components with specifications such as modals, dropdowns, headers, search tools, and data grids. During the front-end development process, it also serves as a coded component library.

Design system is a shared language between designers and developers. When presenting a design system to any team involved in the project, it sparks conversations around design decisions. It helps to identify and solve design problems at an earlier stage due to collaborative effort.

The principles behind a product's design philosophy follow core design principles: unified, universal, conversational, essential and memorable. We create user interfaces for more users in more contexts using more browsers on more devices with more screen sizes using atomic design methodology — the smallest unit is the atom, atoms combine to form molecules, and molecules build complex organisms.

These standards were designed for people. This is our purpose. To be open-minded, honest, inclusive, transparent with our work. To share our thoughts to create better products that serve people.