At IBM, I’ve seen at scale a design system for thousands of designers working on a dazzling array of products.
At UPMC Health Plan, I’ve been part of the very birth of a design system from the initial pitch meeting to its beta launch.
Along the way, I have:
established guidelines that brought coherence and personality to product offerings
advanced best practices and education at the team level while also contributing to style and standards across my organizations
secured buy-in, fostered sustainability, collaborated with engineering, and choreographed design decisions
And what have I learned?
4 personal lessons about design systems and UX writing guidance
(Perhaps more accurately titled: 4 things I think I think.)
Content guidance that I drafted to offer a range of clear options, akin to a color palette.
Guidance exists on a continuum
Especially when it comes to UX writing, good guidance isn’t one-size-fits-all. Often, a design decision calls for an explicit “Do this, and exactly this.” But sometimes, there's a need for guidance that’s more like a palette. Just as primary and secondary colors complement each other visually, content design can benefit from a range of clear options to be skillfully mixed and applied.
An example of guidance that was simplified at my suggestion. It was just easier to explain and enforce “Don’t use periods in headings.”
Make it easy
When we’re well-intentioned in wanting to create top-notch guidance that’s comprehensive, robust and detailed, we risk falling into a trap that we make our systems overwhelming. Design system adoption is a behavior change and meta-UX problem. Guidance that’ll be used is the guidance that’s easiest to grasp, explain, and fit into people’s workflows.
Consistency isn’t always obvious
There’s more than one flavor of UX consistency, and passing an eyeball test doesn’t mean something is meaningfully consistent (or inconsistent). This is particularly true of content design guidance, thanks to the wonderfully complex nuances of language. To be valuable, consistency must support people’s product tasks and journeys.
It’s about empowering decisions
Design systems and guidance are what we make of them. They can create efficiencies, turbocharge processes, free up teams to focus where it matters. They can also stifle design thinking, short circuit problem solving, become a beast to maintain. I’ve seen many sides of it. Given the chance to join MURAL, I’d be an advocate for a design system that measures its ultimate success by the conversations and decisions that its artifacts empower.