Patterns Day 2019 - Danielle Huntrods

Why Design Systems?

In their presentation at Patterns Day 2019, Danielle) talked about the topology of making a successful Design System.

• most of us are here today as we know, or believe that they help us do better work.
• we care about doing better work as they help the outside world in the products that use them.
• there is a lot of diversity in what is ‘best practice’ within the Design Systems community.
• how do we know what would work for us.
• topology.
• systems that have worked well could be considered to have a better topology compared to those that have not.
• We’re trying to solve problems that no individual can solve alone.
• Repeated processes need to be broken down and can aid efficiency.
• We have started looking at better ways to deliver projects with things like agile methodology but fundamentally we break things down.
• There is much discussion about the naming of things, but not of the interconnectivity of those things which can lead to certain gaps.
• unidentified gaps can cause confusion.
• overlaps can appear - with duplication of efforts.
• bad topology has certain symptoms:
  • duplication of efforts
  • conflict of ownership
  • incorrect implementations
  • recurrent miscommunication
• When breaking things down we can lose the overall context.
• Breaking things down into components can lose context
• Since we cannot anticipate every permutation we need to work on how things go together.
• Consistent spacing helps put things back together again.
• There can be gaps in skillset, if there are - there will be a struggle in achieving the goals.
• There are overlaps in what people want the products to have, marketing want all the scripts, developers do not.
• Solutions:
  • keep track of categories.
  • remember the end goal.
  • see the negative space.
  • choose your tools wisely.
  • establish a single source of truth.
  • set priorities for when conflict arise.
• It’s tempting to fallback on tools, but often it is a people problem. Communication is what can solve most problems.