We’ve been talking about design systems for a while now, and even if it’s still something that needs a lot of discussion we have also reached a point where we can begin to see the future of design systems in the next few years.
What we are trying to achieve today with our digital products through design systems may only be the tip of the iceberg. We are in a new stage of our digital journey, trying to make things more automated, more accessible, and more human. If we succeed, we might even experience the end of design systems at some point in the future.

Looking at the past to see the future

Sometimes, looking at what has happened in the past can help anticipate what is coming in the future. Even if design systems are currently one of the hot topics in the design industry, it’s not innovative after all. It even seems rather logical that design systems are now coming into play. Let’s look at the past to understand better why design systems make more sense today. ​​

Hack the system

If you struggle explaining what design systems are, this Disney video comparing two different cartoons may help. It becomes much clearer how the standardization of design can work. But it also highlights that this industrialization is not so new; in fact, even back in Disney’s day, the aim was to automate as much as possible to be as efficient as possible.

This example not only demonstrates how the design industry is trying to industrialize its process. It also brings an excellent answer to the recurrent question: are design systems killing creativity?

You can see with this Disney video we can have different universes, characters, and identities. You can clearly see the skeleton to articulate both of these cartoons, but you can also see they’re not the same at all in the end.
I firmly believe that design systems will set designers free. I don’t think our value is to repeatedly build the same button, the same title, or the same icons. Designers have so much more to bring to our industry than repeating tasks. By setting designers free, design systems help them be more creative.

Speaking of creativity, here is another example with this video illustrating that creativity takes time. The less time you have to do something, the less creative the result. However, do the same thing with more time, and you’ll have way more creative and different results.

Design systems are an excellent way to give time back to designers and allow them to be more creative by focusing on the right issues and not wasting their time on the same things.

Brand System

I am passionate about design systems because they question the foundation of a brand. If we go back on a brand’s history, it’s interesting to see how we still repeat the same patterns. If you want to know more about a brand’s history, I strongly recommend that Base Design talk at the KIKK Festival 2019 by Thomas Léon and Thomas Byttebier; it is very inspiring to understand the origins of branding and where brands are heading in the future.

History of brand

From an etymology point of view, the word “brand” comes from ​​Old English brand ‘burning’ of Germanic origin. Back in the day, farmers used a hot iron to “brand” their herd with a symbol to mark ownership. They started with simple iconography representing their names or family. But as more farmers needed to brand their herds, the more icons there were. It became more and more difficult to distinguish one brand from the other, and brand logos started to rise with more colors, shapes, baselines, decorations, etc.

Over the decades, we have had more and more logos around us. The more brands we have, the more it is difficult for brands to stand out. This is why, for some years now, we have started to see brands experimenting with storytelling. A better way for brands to get noticed.

So, what is the future of branding?

System brand

You probably have noticed brands started an industry revolution too. If you look at the last logos from the most prominent companies, they all look the same.

Same fonts, serif, boldness etc. Brands are changing and becoming more accessible. They are adapting to the constraints of technology and our reading habits. They are becoming more uniform. It’s not about standing out from the crowd anymore; it’s to ensure that their logo can be visible everywhere, on every platform, and in every size. So, it’s not surprising to observe some formatting trends as if there was already a design system for logos. Brands are not as concerned with their visual identity as before, and they’re more concerned with the story their brand will tell.

But over the last past few years, more and more brands are using storytelling. Moreover, people are starting to be fed up with the gap between the story a brand can tell and its actions. Once again, we reach a saturation point where brands must find a new way to reinvent themselves.

So, what would be the next step?

Today, defining a brand’s personality, positioning, or differentiation means working on its experience. Actions speak louder than words. That’s where your brand will be recognized. Even if you use the same codes as others, your brand will be differentiated because it has positive actions loved by its users that align with their storytelling. Don’t just say something anymore, do it.

Patagonia is probably one of the best examples of a brand that acts on things more than simply just saying them. Other brands may say they care for the planet, but only Patagonia go on the streets to protest and show their concern for the planet.

Brand is more than its UI

This is why design systems are relevant today; so we can get rid of this UI work and focus on what matters the most: experience. Yes, the well-known user experience needs to be shown throughout your product representing the brand itself.

We are industrializing our whole digital world because we need to address our user’s needs to be more accessible and easy to use. So, it makes sense if our interfaces and brands start to look similar. It may even be a good thing if it can help users find what they need more efficiently. But there’s one thing we can’t standardize right now: it’s the experience, and the emotion users will feel interacting with our products, our brand.

That’s a whole new area to play with for us.

Future of design systems

This future will be both human and automated, disrupting our ways of working.
Automation will probably take a large part of our jobs, and we may even fear for our jobs. But it is inevitable, and we should instead see these coming changes as an opportunity to leave more room for humanity and innovation.

Human after all

The fall of the design/dev wall

One of the first significant steps we will observe soon is the fall of the designer and developer wall. Design tools are closer and closer to a developer’s state of mind. Tools blend with each other (no-code, design tokens, code generator…) so we can speak the same language and share the same space. This is quite striking with the Figma interface that has completely transformed our approach to collaboration. Do you remember when we had all our files on our local computers and only shared the final result at a particular moment in the project timeline? Not a very good way to break silos, is it?

Besides, we improved by almost 50% of our design process review by sharing with collaborators the design file in an average of ten days after it’s created (versus 19 days in 2019). Allowing our tools to be more automated is an excellent opportunity to set us free and focus on better collaboration. The future of design systems will be more human, and it’s thanks to automation.

State of designers

On the other hand, it may be inevitable that we reduce aspects of some roles by automating some repetitive tasks. Naturally, UI designers and frontend developers are going to be concerned. One of the key statistics on the benefits of design systems is the cost reduction from frontend development and mockups by 30%. Anja Klüver from Prospect shared this interesting feedback that clearly shows the new role balance within their design system implementation. UI designers are the most concerned, and it’s not a surprise when we know that we are now in an experience era, and brands don’t want to invest in their UI anymore.

I know it may sound a bit scary, but if you have been in the design industry for a few years now, you know that a designer’s role is to be in constant evolution. Whether it’s through the change of tools (hello Photoshop), constraints (responsive, apps…), or methods (agile, design thinking…), our job has never been the same since we started, and it probably never will be. Therefore, it is in our nature as designers to adapt and embrace this change. If tomorrow we have less UI to do, that leaves more room for innovation in designing the future: facilitation, architecture, coordination, illustrations, emotions… there is still so much that automation doesn’t know how to do yet and may never know.

Moreover, as the design system is a real product, I wouldn’t be surprised to see these emerging roles shortly:

• Architect Designer: manages and articulates complex design systems with multiple brands, systems, targets…
• Content Writer: writes proper and relevant documentation for the system
• Documentation Designer: makes the documentation more visually appealing and easy to read
• Design System Community Manager: animates a whole organization around the design system product and communicates with all its community using it
• Atomic Designer: builds complex UI libraries with an efficient component logical

Another possible change with reducing the UI in our projects is a possible return to the basics of how we work. Spending less time on the UI and more on the UX will allow us to work in a more “natural” way by focusing on the journey only. What better way for a designer to scribble the paths directly? Imagine then just working on a sketch, and it would be automatically generated into a coded interface? I also find it interesting that Figma is offering to draw directly on their tools on an iPad Pro and I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow, our working tools are a pen instead of our computer mouse. Once again, this automation is a way for us designers to return to a more manual and human profession.

AI is for Augmented Intelligence

These new ways of working would be possible because of AI emergence in our tools. You could say AI is for Artificial Intelligence, but I like to think it should be named Augmented Intelligence for our needs. AI could help us create more efficiently by automating many of our tasks.

In the same way Airbnb and UIzard explored how AI can translate a sketch into a coded interface, I think the future would be to generate a system from a mood board, for example. Imagine starting a new project by taking a picture and AI automatically analyzing colors, patterns, and shapes into design elements we can use? This Augmented Intelligence would help us understand some of our standard design preferences and translate them into a design system so they can be re-used. It could be more than just one system or one interface, and there could be infinite possibilities. I think that the future of design systems will also involve customization. It’s interesting to see how Material evolves with Material You, allowing more space for personalization. You still have a solid system behind your product, but it’s now a flexible and customizable system for your users. Imagine a system powered by AI which is able to adapt the interface to the user depending on their preferences, their location, what time it is, or even how they feel. Creating interfaces that can adapt and evolve that’s a whole new area to play with for designers and it’s definitely more human.

The end of design systems

No screen is the new interface

Screens have taken over. We have come to a saturation point where we need to be away from our screens to preserve our mental health and reconnect with each other.

We are all conscious of this screen addiction, so I believe we are creating more interfaces involving fewer screens. I’m not saying there won’t be screen interfaces anymore; I just think we need to start thinking about how to create interactions with something other than a screen.

This is why voice has been one of the new playgrounds over the last years in our industry: Google Home, Alexa, Siri… all these new technologies we can interact with without looking at a screen. It’s one way to help us break free from our screen dependence. But look at new services too, such as Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces, trying to create new social experiences with our voice only. I’m sure you’ve noticed how much voice messages have increased in our conversations. We’re not just typing anymore; we’re also talking to interact with our friends. As if we were trying to get rid of the screen to take back our lives. I’m very curious to see how Snapchat’s drone, Pixy, will evolve. It’s interesting to create technologies helping us pursue our needs – like taking snapshots of our moments with friends – without being the slave to technology.

In our last survey, How We Document, we found interesting data about what design system documentation includes. Of course, the most documented are all the visible patterns: colors, buttons, typography etc. But what is surprising is the least documented pattern: sound. I believe it indicates what’s to come in the design area. Once we have all our UI and visual patterns documented and automated, we’ll explore new territories to design new experiences. Once again, a brand is so much more than its UI. The future for design systems may involve less UI, but there are new ways to design interactions. For example, I’m sure you all know what the sound identity for some brands is: a Slack notification, a Google Calendar reminder, or when you match on Tinder

Design Systems are just one of many steps to come

To be honest, I secretly hope design systems are coming to an end sooner or later. It would mean we succeeded in industrializing design for projects and setting free many people from repetitive tasks. Moreover, I think there is a future after design systems, even if I’m not sure what exactly, but I’m convinced that design systems are only a step in the development of our digital world.

Just as we faced the birth of the World Wide Web and learned how to build web pages. Or how we tried to upgrade our digital projects with Flash and then how to make those projects more accessible with the rise of HTML 5. Then, with the mobile revolution, we needed to reinvent our way of building pages in responsive design for different screen sizes. Design systems are just another step on this digital journey. I’m sure one day, it will be so obvious in our methods and way of working, and we won’t even talk about design systems anymore because they will have become so ordinary and integrated.