Selecting Your Design System Tool Stack
Tags: Product Design, Design System Operations, Designops, Design System Manager, Design Systems

Design systems have quickly become a necessity in product design.

And the reason for that is simple — they improve efficiency. This is because a well-structured design system bridges the much-loathed gap between design and development. It also ensures reusable design components are readily available to use, thereby speeding up production, among many other reasons.

Do You Really Need a Design System?

One of the very first questions you need to ask yourself when considering whether or not to build a design system is if you really need one. To determine this, ask yourself the following questions:

Do you find yourself doing repetitive work? A design system can save you time (and your designers a lot of frustration) by storing all your most-used design components and code in one place.

A design system can save you time (and your designers a lot of frustration) by storing all your most-used design components and code in one place. Is accessibility a bottleneck? If you struggle to share design assets with other departments, a design system can solve this problem for you by becoming your team’s hub for operations, a place where everybody can coordinate their efforts.

If you struggle to share design assets with other departments, a design system can solve this problem for you by becoming your team’s hub for operations, a place where everybody can coordinate their efforts. Do you struggle to release products on time? A design system will help you streamline your processes, making them more efficient. This can help you work faster and even scale up production.

A design system will help you streamline your processes, making them more efficient. This can help you work faster and even scale up production. Do you work on a digital product? Even one-person teams can benefit from a design system, and those benefits only continue to grow with your team and production.

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then read on. We’ll cover all of the other factors you need to consider before putting your design system tool stack together.

Factors to Consider when Building a Design System Tool Stack

Before you go ahead and assemble your collection of tools, let’s quickly consider a few important:

Understand and Document Your Vision

A design system helps different teams work on the same vision, albeit from different angles. Understanding your brand’s vision system is crucial to building your design system and thus your tool stack because it defines what you’re trying to build and why you’re building it.

Establish Your Design Principles

Design principles, the rules that help guide you and your team when making decisions throughout the design process, are a critical component of your design system. As such, they need to be established before you start building your design system.

Consider What’s Already in Use

Take inventory of the design processes, patterns, components, and all other assets you’re currently using in your design process. You don’t always have to build your design system from scratch.

6 Tools to Consider When Building Your Design System Tool Stack

When it comes to managing component design systems, you need tools that give you flexibility; not just in creating great designs, but also in collaborating across teams. Some tools that fit the bill and are indeed instrumental in helping you build a design system are:

Sketch

Remember, most design systems don’t just contain UI components — they’re usually built on a foundation of component libraries. And that’s where a tool like Sketch comes into play. It is one of the easiest and most versatile tools for building a component library.

One big advantage of Sketch Libraries is that it allows you to easily collaborate with your team. All you have to do is place your file where your teammates can access it (like Dropbox or even GitHub) and have them add your document to their Libraries.

With the recent upgrade to Sketch’s functionality, navigating through nested menu items has become easier, making it an even more valuable tool for building design systems. That’s because it brings Symbols, Text Styles, and Layer Styles into a single place, giving you a clearer view of all the components in every Library you’re using.

On the collaboration front, whenever changes are made to a document, users will be notified. This means that everyone is always kept in the loop about changes to the components your team is using. Integration with other tools (like Invision DSM) gives you yet another reason to include Sketch in your design system tool stack.

Adobe XD

Adobe XD is another well-known tool in product development circles. Designed to help teams create meaningful and memorable user experiences, it can also be used to create the same experiences for design teams.

As a cloud-based application, Adobe XD makes it super-easy to collaborate with coworkers. It also automatically updates your documents, ensuring that you never lose your work. You can also bring in other assets from shared cloud documents and other Adobe Creative Cloud apps. When changes are made to a linked asset, you’ll be notified and will have the option to accept the updates.

Invision Design System Manager (DSM)

Thanks to Invision DSM’s ’seamless integration with Sketch Libraries, you can easily upload files to DSM in a single click. Not only that but you can also sync changes as well as push and pull design system assets.

It also allows you to easily create, edit, collaborate on, and share your design system’s style guide. Other useful features include version history management, component drag-and-drop, and component search. Invision DSM’s answer to merging design and code are snippets and allows you to easily integrate with other tools.

Figma

Another big name in design circles, Figma is a great tool for building design systems. With Figma, you can create animated prototypes of your designs, allowing users to easily see and test concepts they’d like to use on a project. With the capability to let you build each element from the ground up, Figma is a great platform for creating the building blocks of your projects. Furthermore, collaboration and file sharing is a breeze, making use Figma as your source of truth for design projects a no-brainer.

Supernova

Supernova syncs DesignOps with DevOps by bringing code into your design system, removing the need for handoffs at all, and allowing you to export your products into ode perfectly customized for your team — down to the character thanks to its bleeding-edge blueprints technology.

Equipped with plugins for Sketch and Figma that allow you to utilize and update your design system within (or across!) both design tools, versioning, documentation — Supernova serves as a centralized system for your entire tool stack.

Stencil

If you need to create web components for your product, one tool you can depend on to get the job done is Stencil. With Stencil, you don’t have to worry about browser or platform compatibility. This translates into better stability, consistent standards, and less busywork.

One aspect you’ll definitely love about Stencil is the way it allows you to create a custom UI library that works across all platforms.

Selecting a Design System Tool Stack — Be Sure to Pick the Right Tool

Selecting the right tools for your design system tool stack is crucial as it will have a significant impact on your workflow. And if you select the wrong tools, it can lead to your organization rejecting the design system outright.

So how do you ensure your selections are up to snuff?

Simple. Make sure you pick a tool that:

Easily integrates with your current design and development tools

Provides easy access to all users throughout the organization

Can handle your storage and bandwidth needs

So go ahead, take that first step toward building your design system by selecting the right tools for the job.