Design Systems: A Product for People in the Age of AI

The business benefits of a design system are evident. They provide product teams with a foundational framework of tools and assets they can rely on to build user interfaces in alignment with your brand, freeing them from having to implement the same button for the n-th time. Additionally, you gain the benefit of delivering coherent experiences to your end customers, which helps them maintain trust in your business and encourages them to continue paying for your products or services.

But there's a critical aspect to a Design System that is often overlooked. Its fundamental goal is to boost collaboration and accelerate innovation by empowering the people who use it. These are individuals in product teams who are typically passionate about solving problems creatively, but often communicate in different technical languages during their day-to-day work activities.

When the users of a Design System can rely on a shared language, the process overhead, the back-and-forth between disciplines, and the delivery time of those critical features are significantly reduced. And these benefits aren't just theoretical. Case studies, like IBM's Design Thinking practice, have shown that a unified approach can lead to a 33% reduction in development time and a 2x faster time-to-market.

By working from a single source of truth, product teams eliminate the ambiguity that leads to costly rework and inefficient communication. It allows them to really focus on solving the problem with the highest priority in their domain, moving with confidence, getting extra time to work on what each discipline enjoys the most, and in turn, uplifting the other.

In the current age of AI, fostering this type of collaboration is more crucial than ever. If, like me, you've played with AI-powered generation tools that produce code or create beautiful user interfaces, you'll notice that there's a disconnect between the two domains when it comes to creating something that can actually be shipped for an organization. It is not enough to tell one of these tools to build an application with a "modern UI" or to request them to create a user flow without understanding the implications of the default tech frameworks that are used behind the scenes. The result will look generic and will be very difficult to integrate with your existing codebase, leading to more rework.

Human intervention is still needed to produce outcomes that can fully understand all your requirements, including high-quality and scalable code that is aligned with your own infrastructure, as well as visual and interactive alignment with your brand standards.

The Hidden Benefit: Team Morale and Retention.

I can attest to the fact that using a common language has a boost in team morale and engagement. Solving problems together creates a sense of camaraderie and ownership in teams. This, in turn, has a direct impact on employee retention and can reduce churn, which is extremely expensive for organizations.

Consider the average time to hire a new tech employee, which can vary from 30 to 40 days, as well as the cost of that vacant seat. The expense of replacing a single employee in a specialized role is estimated to be 100% to 150% of their annual salary, accounting for recruitment fees, onboarding time, and the significant productivity loss while the new hire gets up to speed.

When an employee goes away, they take with them valuable business knowledge about how your organization works, and depending on your size and political complexity, building that knowledge takes from 2 to 6 months. How often are you willing to make that investment in a new hire for the exact same position?

By fostering a collaborative environment with a design system, you're not just improving the day-to-day; you're investing in the people you already have, which can be one of the most powerful and cost-effective business strategies an organization can pursue.

Even as businesses leverage AI to automate repetitive tasks, humans remain their most valuable asset. Next time you discuss a Design System, ask yourself: What's the real cost of a team that can't collaborate effectively? Investing in a Design System isn't just about efficiency; it's about empowering your people, fostering a sense of belonging, and ultimately driving innovation.