Design systems are the backbone of my work, providing a framework that guides and unifies process and outcome across spaces - products, ecosystems, verticals.

In 2016 the company I worked for, having made acquisitions over the years, found itself with five visually disparate products being marketed as a platform. The Connectwise design system was implemented to address the discord between the products.

This initial foray informed my next position at Nielsen, where I contributed to multiple iterations of the company’s design system, and led the adoption of it at Gracenote, one of the larger acquisitions made by the company.

Given the large scale of the organization, this effort resulted in a more robust system than I had worked on in the past. It included foundations like design principles, writing guidelines, accessibility considerations, and development integration including a front end library of framework agnostic components built with the web components APIs.

Despite this, implementing the system in such a complex environment (literally hundreds of products) was a challenge. Being designated as the design system leader for one of the larger subsidiary companies meant interacting with multiple product teams, and showed me a new side of the process.

Working at a startup a departure from the former experiences, one that has allowed me to establish a system from scratch, with broad input and adoption from the beginning. The value of the system was proven almost immediately, as our first large rollout resulted in securing a contract with the development company building Netflix’s Stockholm headquarters. The comments from clients during sales negotiations were especially focused on the consistency and quality in UI when compared with competing products.

Design systems are an assumption at most organizations, but I’ve learned that successfully implementing them requires much more than specifying some components styles and behavior. Creating a system that aligns with the vision of the organization, and selling that system to a broad range of stakeholders is where the real challenge lies. In my experience, the best way to overcome this challenge is to create a quality system with input from the same people that will be using it, and focusing on usability for design and technology teams.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t use this forum to discuss one of the biggest advantages that these tools present, namely accessibility. My goal is to create products that can improve the lives of anyone that wants to use them. The scalable nature of atomic design enables the teams I’ve worked with to adhere to WCAG 2.2 AA guidelines. It gives me a reason beyond creative interest to look at typography, contrast, and interaction.