— Donella Meadows, Source (YouTube)

This picture is already shown on the intro page. I repeat it because it is so important.

Intro and basics

Every system has a particular function in order to seek a particular goal. Your design system will also produce a particular outcome, whether you define it or not. Why you should define it:

• You could set the goal of your system to consistency, speed or growth (e.g. sell cars). If you want to achieve the goal consistency this means additional work for the product teams. This additional work is only legitimate if it contributes to the overall goal that everyone has agreed upon. This additional work must be planned in advance and the Product Owners will share their resources only if they have to.
• The design part of your design system has also to serve an overall goal. It has to be based on something. Don’t just start designing components. If you do so, you will reach a point where you can’t make decisions anymore. Because what is the basis for your design decisions? In the beginning, decisions can be made on the base of taste. In a project with more and more people involved, that doesn't work for long. You need a “design seed“ 🌱that you can always fall back on in case of an emergency and if you don’t know what to do. As soon as this design seed exists, other people can also fall back on it.

If you know your design seed, this could be also the base for a name.

Name

Decisions are difficult without a common base

— Farai Madzima, Shopify / ClarityConf 2020 (YouTube link is not public)

We did not define an overall goal. But according to a “design goal”: We found it 1 year after starting working on the design system. This might not be the right way. The teams already started working on their products without knowing the “design seed“ 🌱 – what can be quite frustrating. We only found the design seed, because we were searching for it. We searched for it because we had no base with which we could make decisions. Our design seed is: Contrast.

— Anna Stumpf, SinnerSchrader

Goals

This kind of defined goal also allows you to measure your impact.

Analytics

Tell better stories, faster.

— Yesenia Perez-Cruz, Vox Media / Source (YouTube)

The goal is not consistency, we optimise for speed of design and development.

— Raphael Guilleminot and Matt Vagni, Deliveroo / Source (YouTube)

Short term goal: Consistency Long therm goal: Quality + Productivity