10 Tips for Driving Design System Adoption

If you’ve built a design system or two, adoption probably kept you up at night. And that makes perfect sense. You spend months building out a whole design system that should make the company faster. But it’s all for nothing if no one uses it.

Luckily, there are a few tried and true strategies to make sure your design system is widely adopted. We learned ten of these strategies from finalists in the Adoption category of this year’s Design System Awards.

Below, we’re sharing what we learned from Outdoorsy, MGM Resorts International, Wise, and IFS.

Start by listening

It’d be pretty ill-advised to create a product without first chatting with your intended users. And if you intend to treat your design system like a product, you should start with the same approach.

Before launching the Vega design system at MGM Resorts International, the team researched “existing design practices, culture, and user needs.” That research included interviews where the design system team drilled into pain points and opportunities.

Their research had two big benefits. First, it helped to get people on board with the design system before they launched anything. And by listening to the feedback, they were able to build a design system that would truly benefit stakeholders.

It might seem obvious, but ensuring design system adoption could start with engaging consumers early.

Tie adoption of the design system to a bigger company goal

If there’s a huge company goal your colleagues are already rallying around, try to communicate how adopting the design system will help achieve it.

That’s exactly what Wise learned. Their first attempt at driving adoption didn’t go so well. That time, they employed a piecemeal approach where they encouraged product teams to start using the design system one by one.

The second time around, they tied the design system to the company’s brand refresh. Their documentation became the place for teams to learn how to best align with the new standards.

And with everyone already bought into the brand refresh, adopting the design system became a no-brainer.

Identify and equip champions

If your design system team is centralized, you might find it hard to consistently engage with consumers throughout the product organization.

Outdoorsy solved this problem by identifying the Designers, Developers, and Product Managers who were most excited about the launch of the design system and turning them into official Bonfire Stokers. Those folks then served as intermediaries between the DS team and product teams, helping to drive cultural change and increase adoption.

While you may not come up with a name as cool as the Bonfire Stokers for your evangelists, having a few people help spread the word is never a bad idea.

Create a rollout plan that’s unique to your organization

Outdoorsy also did something else unique: they created a rollout plan that took into account how the company functioned.

Instead of focusing on incorporating existing features and components into the design system, they decided to start with net-new features. The idea was that designers and developers could get used to using the design system to create new features, and eventually, the design system team would broaden their work to cover existing components and features.

By offering a low-risk way for consumers to use the design system, they’ve been able to get more people on board.

Outdoorsy’s approach may not be the perfect one for your company. But, crafting a tailored approach to rolling out your design system could be the key to gaining more support.

Celebrate early wins

Chances are it’ll take time for your company to realize the full value of your design system. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be small victories along the way.

Wise certainly had a big early win to celebrate. The design system was in its infancy when the company decided to update its logo. Pre-design system that would have been a disaster. But with a design system in place, updating the logo was a quick win.

Showing off how much the design system was able to help with the brand refresh earned the team a few extra converts.

Regardless of how you demonstrate the impact of your design system, starting early should help steadily grow usage.

Espouse the benefits of adopting the design system

As design system practitioners, we know that design systems provide tons of value. But our colleagues on the product side may not be so sure. Wise took the time to make sure that everyone on the product team knew about the immediate benefits of adopting the design system – consistency, efficiency, and improved accessibility. They also frequently talked about the long-term benefits, including the ability to make widespread changes super quickly.

With everyone in the organization clear on why they were investing in a design system, driving adoption was a little easier.

For you, it’s worth it to think about what the design system will bring to the company and then start shouting it far and wide.

Prioritize design system education

What does adopting the design system look like? Well, you’ll have to answer that question for your colleagues.

IFS elected to help everyone adopt the design system the “right” way with education. New joiners got acclimated to the design system by learning about it in onboarding materials. And existing employees got up to speed with easily accessible information on the company’s e-learning platform.

To try this out in your organization, think about the ways you and your colleagues currently learn about new initiatives, policies, and information. Is there an opportunity for you to put information about the design system there? Once you’ve included education around the design system in key places, you should see usage increase.

Make adoption easy

When we launch a new design system, we’re asking our colleagues to change their workflows which is never easy.

But, we can lessen the friction by ensuring we take their existing tools and workflows into account.

IFS provided resources that were compatible with Figma and various code packages, making it easy for teams to quickly implement them.

In your case, think about the tools that are integral to design and development at your company. Then, ensure your design system seamlessly integrates with those tools.

👉 Wondering which tools integrate with zeroheight? Check out our integrations page. 👈

Broaden your audience with a flexible design system

MGM Resorts International includes multiple different properties and brands. To ensure everyone in the product organization was able to adopt the design system, they created a flexible design system that could be easily customized to meet the needs of different brand identities.

If you’re planning to support a range of brands and products, ensuring your design system is flexible enough to serve them all is key to widespread adoption.

👉 We’ve recently released a host of new features in support of multi-theme design systems; check them all out on our What’s New page. 👈

Keep your eye on the metrics

It’s pretty hard to grow adoption if you don’t know where you currently sit.

That was never a problem for MGM Resorts International because they regularly analyzed design system metrics to see who was using it and how.

By staying in touch with the metrics, the team had the data they needed to pivot when necessary.

For your design system, you may start by identifying the metrics you care most about and how to track them. Once they’re tracked, it should be easy to figure out how your efforts are going and pivot to drive greater design system adoption.

👉 The zeroheight Enterprise plan includes tons of ways to measure your design system, including integrations with Google Analytics and Hotjar. Let us show you how it works. 👈

The full-proof method to design system adoption

Alright, you caught us; there’s no one failsafe way to make sure folks start using your design system.

But we’re pretty sure a combination of these strategies will get you going in the right direction.