How to shape design systems culture
This is a preliminary post for the Design System culture series
When I led a design system effort in 2019 for Bukalapak, one of the biggest e-commerce in Indonesia, I quickly learned that design systems would not evolve without healthy culture. I also learned that…
- A pattern library without any participation from the community is pretty much useless.
- Pursuing consistency is an inaccurate goal that fosters a wrong mindset within the team. It can create a culture where people would just use whatever exists on the system without being critical.
- A set of principle is simply meaningless if the team doesn’t practice and challenge it from time to time. In the end, principles are man-made.
Fast forward to 2020, we were being intentional to design the contribution experience and significantly increased the contribution. The team has a federated model and everyone is proactively contributing to the design systems. By the time I left Bukalapak, we increased the contribution significantly. The culture shifted a little from passively participating to be proactive participation from everyone.
Right now, I’m leading the design system effort in the Education public sector. Learned from my previous experience, I wanted to experiment with a new approach. To start to build community participation around the system from the get-go.
So far, everyone is already participating even before we completed the basic UI kits. A healthy culture of the design systems is at the heart of successful design systems.
This short series will discuss a few strategies and models you can exercise to shape a healthy design systems culture in your team:
- Intro: How to shape your design systems culture
- #1: LEGO Kits Syndrome
- #2: The BNARL model
- #3: From BNARL to interventions
- #4: The Pattern Friday as Ritual
- #5: How to Facilitate a Pattern Friday?
- #6: A Case Study: Bukalapak 2019
- #7: A Small Team Case Study: Indonesia Education Civic Tech 2021
