Traits of effective design systems
I first started building websites in 2013, and the same problem kept coming up. Every new idea I had meant a lot of setup just to get a page laid out nicely. I’d be fighting with the CSS to get it just right, and then even more to make it display properly on a mobile. And because every project started from scratch, I’d repeat the process over and over – save some copy-pasta.
So when I discovered Bootstrap, I felt like I had been liberated. It was (and still is) a hugely popular library of reusable, customisable CSS classes for elements and layouts. I could get designs up and running quickly, my projects had a feeling of cohesion across each other, and things “just worked” out of the box in every environment. I was able to focus on the hard stuff while making sure it looked good (which was important to me due to my previous life as a graphic designer).
Fast-forward seven years, and I found myself on the team building and maintaining the Bank of New Zealand’s enterprise design system. Now I was the one providing developers with resources that “just worked” out of the box. The environment was vastly different, and the tooling had changed over the years, but the core problems being solved were the same. I spent four years on the design system team before moving into delivery teams that consume it.
This post outlines the key traits that I believe led to its impact and success.
