Last week, ten Vox Product members met in San Francisco to attend Clarity, a conference about style guides and design systems. As a growing company, this is something that we (like everyone!) are struggling with internally and trying improve on.
For two days, we learned about different processes and the research that goes into developing, iterating, maintaining, and documenting complex design systems that we plan on using in our own work. Tips ranged from how to technically incorporate accessibility all the way to how important it is to include many different team members to insure that the product is strong and useful. For such a focused conference there were a wide range of topics covered, with a few common themes.
Design for everyone, regardless of ability
Most sessions at Clarity touched on the importance of making design systems accessible. Some showed examples of how to make them accessible, and Cordelia McGee-Tubb gave an entire talk about designing for accessibility from the beginning.
Making accessible designs should not be a line item you check off as a part of your process, it should be considered from the very beginning. When designing a system, you should focus on making the experience great for all types of users, regardless of ability.
While you're doing the work to make your design system accessible, you should document it. By sharing and documenting your work, you are ensuring that others using your system also have accessible designs. For example, Cordelia McGee-Tubb showed us Dropbox's Scooter, a SCSS framework, which includes documentation about what colors are WCAG compliant, and what it means. By defining and sharing, they are ensuring that everyone who uses this system is aware of the contrast standards.
Document everything
Miriam Suzanne said in her talk "if you don't document something, it doesn't exist." By documenting your process and your design system, you are able to effectively communicate to all users what is included in your product and how to contribute to it.
Documentation is important for on-boarding new users or explaining a system to existing users. Anna Pickard explained that good documentation empowers users to understand a system, rather than trying to ask the one person who understands the system to constantly validate decisions.
Loving the common theme at #clarity2016 that documentation/design systems requires buy-in from other humans. PEOPLE SKILLS > CODE
— alisha ramos (@alishalisha) April 1, 2016
Work together
A design system will not be effective unless other team members understand the value and adopt it. Guaranteeing that others will adopt it starts with including and getting insight from various consumers of the system. In Nathan Curtis' session, he suggested designating team members who are passionate and knowledgable on certain topics as "go-tos" instead of relying on one person to make huge decisions for everyone.
It's important to seek insight from many different skill sets depending on the topic. Rachel Nabors said in her talk "make people feel like they're involved." By recruiting co-conspirators from separate teams with different disciplines, you can work together to make the most effective design system for every type of user.
Did you go to Clarity? Are you working on a design system or pattern library? Let us know your takeaways and experiences in the comments!