An expert designer can help improve your digital product delivery with the creation and management of a design system.
A design system is a managed and evolving collection of design guidelines, methods, documentation, tools and assets, specific to an organisation and its products.
With a clearly defined design system, product designers and engineers can focus their efforts on meeting user needs, rather than re-creating and re-inventing design and UI components.
The product designer will build up a design system that typically integrates elements in the following categories:
Layout:
Guidance and definitions of how UI elements should be arranged, spaced and aligned.
Styles:
The key aspects of your visual and brand language— such as colours, icons, logos and fonts.
Components:
The basic UI elements—such as buttons, forms and sliders.
Regions:
Structural design elements—such as navigation menus or search bars.
Content:
Guidance on usage of text and media content— including house style, core messaging and tone of voice.
Usability:
Advice and rules on user accessibility and internationalisation topics.
Through your design system, the product designer gives your teams a “single source of truth” on design issues, it helps team members maintain design consistency, rapidly create high-fidelity prototypes to test solutions—and iterate products faster.
As the design system grows and evolves, the role of the product designer expands from creation to ongoing stewardship. The role requires careful collaboration with engineers and other stakeholders across the organisation. It calls for a level of technical understanding by the product designer—such as providing the necessary code for developers to integrate design components into the product.
Ultimately, the product designer acts as an advocate for the design system—and champions its ability to accelerate and improve the design and development of great digital products.
Expert product designers work closely with engineering colleagues in integrated teams to enable end-to-end product delivery capabilities.
They understand the fundamental principles and requirements of both design and engineering—so will never propose solutions that cannot be built.
They will help your organisation create and grow a high-quality design system. This comprehensive tool-set of design standards, assets and resources empowers your organisation to manage design efficiently and consistently, with reusable components and clear guidelines.
An experienced product designer understands that, when it comes to providing great experiences, the demands on organisations are much higher today than ever before. The designer knows that customers and users expect high-quality, delightful experiences— whether they are doing business with you or working for you.
For this reason, the product designer will work to help your customers enjoy seamless multi-channel engagements with you that deliver on your brand promise.
