Revitalizing Your Design System: A 7-Step Guide

A well-maintained design system is a powerful tool that can save your team time and improve the user experience. However, keeping it up-to-date can be a challenge. In this guide, we’ll explore the concept of “design system drift” and provide a 7-step guide to help you get your design system back on track.

What is Design System Drift?

Design system drift refers to the gradual deviation from your design system over time. As new needs arise, designers and developers may create new components or styles that don’t align with the existing system. If left unchecked, this drift can undermine trust and usability, slow down your team, and create multiple variations of the same component.

Step 1: Make the Case for Your Design System

Before you start working on your design system, you need to convince your organization that it’s worth investing in. Here are some arguments you can use:

• Accelerate development speed: A well-maintained design system can save your team time and effort in the long run.
• Foster trust with users: Consistency is key to building trust with your users.
• Improve usability: A design system helps ensure that your product is intuitive and easy to use.
• Improve accessibility: A design system can help ensure that your product is accessible to all users.

Step 2: Audit Your Current System

Conduct a comprehensive audit of your current system to identify inconsistencies and opportunities for improvement. This will help you make a strong case for updating your design system.

1. Divide the work among team members to ensure a thorough audit.
2. Use Figma to collect and organize screenshots of every instance of each component or style.
3. Label each screenshot with its location and any relevant notes.

# Example audit template
## Component 1
* Screenshot 1: [insert screenshot]
* Screenshot 2: [insert screenshot]
* Notes: [insert notes]

## Component 2
* Screenshot 1: [insert screenshot]
* Screenshot 2: [insert screenshot]
* Notes: [insert notes]

Step 3: Prioritize Changes

Once you have your audit, prioritize the changes you want to make. Work with your team, PM, and engineering leads to create a stack-ranked list of styles and components to update.

1. Use dot voting to prioritize changes.
2. Consider both impact and cost when voting.
3. Focus on low-effort, high-impact changes.

// Example prioritization script
const changes = [
  { name: 'Component 1', impact: 5, cost: 3 },
  { name: 'Component 2', impact: 3, cost: 5 },
  { name: 'Component 3', impact: 4, cost: 2 },
];

changes.sort((a, b) => b.impact / b.cost - a.impact / a.cost);
console.log(changes); // Output: sorted list of changes

Step 4: Consolidate and Design

Redesign components and patterns with minimal variance while accounting for all current and reasonably possible future use cases.

1. Identify distinct use cases for each component or style.
2. Design with minimal variants.
3. Test complex components with users.

Step 5: Build and Launch Your Designs

Partner closely with your engineering team to bring your designs to life.

1. Sweat the details to ensure quality implementation.
2. Test your new components in every instance.

Step 6: Document Your Design System

Keep your design system well-documented to enable designers and engineers to use the library effectively.

1. Use Figma to maintain a component system.
2. Create a living system with your engineers.

Step 7: Keeping Your System Up-to-Date

Regularly review and update your design system to prevent drift.

1. Use design reviews to ensure component and style use.
2. Update during projects to foster a culture of continuous improvement.
3. Track changes and propose projects to address design system debt.