How to set up an efficient Design System organization 

In order to facilitate buy-in and maintain a Design System, it is necessary to find ways of working in a multi-disciplinary way, thus breaking down potential organizational silos (Design, Brand, Tech, etc.). This often means adapting existing ways of working or inventing new ones.

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Should you set up a dedicated Design System team?

The organization established around the Design System is key to its scalability. Two organizational options are possible:

- Decentralized or distributed model: several members of the Product teams are allocated a small part of their time to work on setting up and feeding the Design System. 

- Centralized model: the Design System is the responsibility of a dedicated team.

It is often possible to test a combination of models. Salesforce, for example, has dedicated a central team to the "Lighting" system, supported by contributors throughout the organization.

Whatever the organizational model chosen, the roles to be taken on board from the outset are as follows:
- Designers (Product Designers and specialized profiles)

- Developers

- one or more Product Managers

- other asset users (e.g. marketing, communications, etc.)

- a sponsor supporting the initiative

Product Designers involved in building the Design System need to excel in visual design, interaction design and information architecture. Similarly, Developers must have a strong appetite for front-end development.

It may be a good idea to appoint a Design System manager to oversee the creation and maintenance of the system, and to evangelize its value to the organization. 

As well as allocating dedicated resources to the Design System, clear governance is essential to ensure that the system can adapt to change. The first step is to answer a number of questions about how changes are managed: Who validates modifications to the system? How are requests for new components handled? What happens when bugs or regressions are detected?

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How do you engage your teams?

More important than its construction, the key to the success of a Design System lies in the team's ability to encourage stakeholders to use it. Depending on the size of the company, it is difficult to encourage people to adopt one, and it will only be adopted if it is deemed useful.

For the organization to follow the direction the team has set, it is necessary to :

Carrying a vision and establishing strong, shared principles of experience.

Get management buy-in for financing, i.e. dedicate capacity to the system over the long term.

Show the value of the system through a test environment so that users can test it and make it their own.

Gather opinions and suggestions from internal users, as you would for any product. Getting this feedback is a good way to better understand their needs, identify potential problems and improve the system.

Evaluate how internal users use the system through regular interviews, observation and questionnaires.