How to launch your design system with zeroheight

So, you’ve spent months working on your design system. Your team has identified the highest-value components and started there. There are live code examples that should help your organization develop loads faster. And, you’ve spent weeks agonizing over the right Rules and guidelines to include throughout.

The only thing left to do is to share it with your colleagues, aka launch your design system.

But, how do you ensure it’s well received initially? Then, how do you ensure your team builds checking the design system into their workflows? That’s the age-old question.

Even after talking to tons of teams, we’re not sure there’s an exact right answer. However, there are a few strategies successful teams have used to nail their design system launch and maintain viewership. Below, we’ve detailed those strategies along with zeroheight features you can use to make launching your design system easier. 

Take your design system on a roadshow

When you launch, your colleagues may need to learn how to use your design system effectively. Some may have never worked with a design system before. And some might have worked with design systems that significantly differ from the one you’ve built. 

A roadshow is the perfect opportunity to educate your colleagues on your design system, including what you’ve included, how to best fit it into their existing workflows, and how to provide feedback. A roadshow stop is also the perfect time to ask colleagues to bookmark the design system’s custom domain.

As you talk to the teams who will use the design system, you can also take note of their questions to improve your styleguides.

Create and maintain a changelog

Your design system will likely get a ton of traffic immediately after you launch it. It makes sense: everything is new and shiny. Plus, you’re actively talking to your colleagues about how to use it. 

To continue the momentum, we recommend creating a changelog. It shows your team that the design system is constantly updated. And, it gives folks a place to start when they visit your design system after a long absence. 

Luckily, there’s an easy way to generate one. What’s new allows you to automatically generate a list of every page that’s been added, updated, or deleted in the last 30 days or since your last Release. From there, you can add more context. 

Use Styleguide Releases to mark your progress

You may want to leverage Styleguide Releases as you update your design system. Releases have lots of benefits like:

• allowing you to hide in-progress work 
• making it easier to keep the design system in rhythm with product updates 
• helping you keep track of your design system’s evolution

For design system adoption, Releases also give you distinct milestones where you can invite your colleagues back into your styleguides. 

For example, you can treat your design system like a product with proper launches that respond to user feedback.

Create a dedicated channel for design system updates

You might be wondering how you can build excitement for your releases. And we’ve thought a lot about that too. 

For that, we recommend creating a dedicated place for folks to learn about new updates. A dedicated channel in Slack or Teams is an excellent idea since colleagues are likely looking for other key company updates there. Both our Slack and Teams integrations allow you to send a notification whenever you release a new version of your styleguide. You can even customize the release notes to help your colleagues understand the most essential parts of your latest Release. 

You can also use the dedicated channel to field questions and suggestions. 

Solicit feedback

Like any good Product Manager, you’ll likely want to respond to user feedback. Responding to feedback also has the added benefit of increasing design system adoption. Undoubtedly, your colleagues are more likely to use the design system when they feel like it meets their expressed needs. 

There are tons of ways to gather feedback on your design system. You can use the Hotjar integration to launch a quick survey. You could add a feedback form to the styleguide footer. Or, you could enable Page Ratings to have viewers quickly vote on whether or not they found a page valuable. Regardless of your chosen method, the most important thing is giving design system consumers a way to share their feedback with you.

Allow contribution

You could stop at soliciting feedback, and that would be ok! But, some of the most widely adopted design systems have a mechanism for contribution. Deciding on the right contribution model is the first step. 

After that, you can give your colleagues instructions on how they can be a part of the design system. With shared ownership across the entire organization, you’ll likely find more folks excited to adopt the design system.

Adoption is always top of mind

Here’s the thing: even after you launch your design system, you’re still thinking of new ways to improve design system adoption. While the work is never done, the good news is that zeroheight is around to help make it easier. If you’re currently going at it alone, give us a try on our free plan or get in touch to learn more about our advanced plans.