Design Systems: Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your Own

Design is more important than ever - and design systems have become a huge piece of what makes a company or product successful, especially in the hyper-competitive global software market. These companies have historically relied only on user experience as a key differentiator. This demand for better experiences puts immense pressure on designers across the globe. They are compelled to take up more projects and work faster, while delivering higher-quality products.

This can create problems if there is no standardized design language to pull from.

Why Companies Need Design Systems

Design doesn’t scale easily. Efficiency doesn’t emerge from thin air. Scaling design through hiring, without putting standards in place, is a myth. With every new hire, new ideas for color palettes, typography and patterns appear in the product, growing the inconsistency and increasing the maintenance cost. Every new hire increases the design entropy. There’s only one way to stop the growth of the chaos. Committing to running a design system process. Gradual growth of a design system equals gradual increase in consistency and speed of software development.

Design scales. But it scales only with a design system.

What Is A Design System?

A design system is a set of standards for design and code along with components that unify both practices. Think of it as the same set of instructions and Lego kit for everyone.If you’re a designer or a developer, then this guide to building your own design system is for you.

How To Create a Design System in 12 Steps

Built on the experience of creating an internal design system at UXPin and interviewing 40+ design and engineering leaders working on design systems, this guide helps you with every step of creating a design system (and includes bonus resources).

Each section leads to a new page where concepts are explained in greater detail, but here is the overview.

Frequently Asked Questions About Design Systems

What is the purpose of design systems?

The primary purpose of design systems is to increase efficiency in product development. With a consistent design language in place, it becomes easier to design products at scale that are consistent in aesthetics, user interface, and user experience. Design systems also promote collaboration, since handoffs across distributed teams become easier.

What companies use design systems?

Some of the biggest brands out there use design systems for more efficient product development. These include the likes of Salesforce, Shopify, WeWork, Mailchimp, and even Apple.

How are design systems different from pattern libraries or style guides?

Pattern libraries, together with style guides, toolkits, and design principles form an entire design system. In other words, pattern libraries and style guides, both, are important parts of a design system.

What makes a good design system?

Irrespective of the tools used to create it, a good design system is one which is reusable, robust, and well-documented. Most importantly, a good design system helps make the design process more efficient, and ultimately, more cost-effective.

Get Your Design System Started

It takes just one committed person to kick off the process and change the way your organization builds software.

Want a head start? Get the free Design Systems Starter Kit. It includes this guide as an actionable checklist, a deck for evangelizing design systems, and an ebook on why design systems matter.