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Unlock the power of your Design System

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Written by

Craig Jenner

Lead UX Designer

Kate McElroy

Global Managing Partner

From friction to smooth workflows

Design systems are often seen as hurdles to overcome, another layer of process slowing down designers from doing their best work. But when approached thoughtfully, a design system can be the opposite: a powerful enabler that helps teams design faster, smarter, and more creatively.

In a recent Manyone webinar, Kate McElroy and Craig Jenner unpacked how to make your design system work for you – and not the other way around.

Key takeaways:

A successful design system is more than a library of components. It’s a toolkit that simplifies complexity, empowers designers, and fosters collaboration across teams.

Build for usefulness, not ease of enforcement.
Make adoption effortless – design systems should be the first tool designers reach for, especially in crunch time.
Hide complexity behind simplicity.
Let governance grow organically rather than imposing it from above.
Embed the system across design and development teams.
Experiment, learn, and share within the wider community.

When approached this way, a design system isn’t a hurdle. It’s a springboard for creativity and efficiency.

Want to know more? Watch a recent webinar with Kate McElroy and Craig Jenner on unlocking the potential of your design system.

Watch the session on-demand

Enable designers to focus on what truly matters

It’s tempting to think of a design system as a tool for brand consistency or accessibility compliance. And yes, that’s part of it. But the real value lies in helping designers and developers do their work more efficiently. And more importantly, allowing designers to focus their time on the more creative aspects of the job.

Having a design system should take care of the yes/no questions – the small decisions – so designers can focus on solving the challenges that really matter.

The result? Designers spend less time worrying about whether a color is “right” or a component is “on brand,” and more time improving the experience for users.

Design for adoption

Despite their potential, many design systems fail to reach their full impact. The biggest issue? Adoption.

A design system may be theoretically perfect, but if designers – or the wider organization – don’t see the value, it won’t be used. Why? Often, systems are built to be easy to manage rather than genuinely useful. Craig sums it up:

“Easy to manage doesn’t mean it’s a good design system. Usefulness means it’s a good design system.”

The key to adoption is building a design system people actually want to use:

Think of designers as users. Every design decision should answer the question: Will this help them, or frustrate them?
Make the system the path of least resistance. In moments of crunch, the design system should be the tool designers reach for first, not the obstacle they try to work around.
Hide complexity behind simplicity. A good design system manages complexity for the designer. Tokens, components, and rules should feel effortless to use, even if the underlying structure is intricate.

Easy to manage doesn’t mean it’s a good design system. Usefulness means it’s a good design system.

Craig Jenner

Lead Design System Architect

Manyone

An ecosystem approach to governance

Governance is essential, but traditional top-down enforcement rarely works. Instead, Kate and Craig recommend a bottom-up, ecosystem approach: Start by defining the ideal workflow, identify all the ways it could go wrong, and build tools that make the right behaviors the easiest ones to do.

Practical tools to encourage adoption include:

Emojis or “under construction” labels on components in Figma to signal upcoming changes.
Test components to let designers preview updates before release.
Multiple onboarding methods (such as documentation, video tutorials, workshops) to accommodate different learning styles.

Embed the system across teams

Adoption isn’t just about designers. Development teams need to understand and integrate with the design system as well.

Engaging developers early and maintaining open communication helps them see the reasoning behind design decisions and the constraints the system addresses. Aligning token structures with developer workflows further smooths collaboration, ensuring that design choices translate cleanly into code. Tools like Figma Connect, can also help bridge the gap between design and development, creating a more seamless workflow.

The ultimate goal is a shared ecosystem where designers and developers can work efficiently together, rather than operating as two disconnected systems.

A healthy design system is effortless to use. Behind the scenes it’s a horrible tangle of wires, but for the designer it should feel simple – that’s what it means to store complexity, not pass it on.

Craig Jenner

Lead Design System Architect

Manyone

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