Treat your design system like an internal product. Appoint a point person who can act as the product owner and primary evangelist.
Create the conditions on your team for a successful strategy to emerge. Coach your team to develop and maintain an environment that nurtures infant idea.
Keep a pulse on the industry and communities relevant to the role. Establish a strong partnership with HR/Recruiting and create a consistent candidate experience.
For digital product agencies with clients that sell complex software, how do you help them fix an existing product or pivot to a new market?
See what went right and what didn’t, and then translate what worked into a process.
Think reusability and shareability outside of your immediate projects. Try not to overextend yourself by building every use case
Share your product briefs widely. Good ones will serve as training material for new employees and historical reference for new projects.
Nurture relationships with strategy-defining partners so that you can join projects as early as possible. Get your stakeholders to express their hopes and fears. When they envision a great outcome, what is driving that?
Create an environment where diverse perspectives constantly analyze your data. The more discussion you have about these numbers, the more nuanced and savvy your team will become.
Onboarding is your chance to start new employees off on the right foot. Plan in advance and continue the process over the first few weeks.
Design is a collaborative sport. Ultimately, communication is the skill that will enable your team to win.
Building a Design System to scale across brands requires flexibility, but also consistency. Get good at communicating regularly with DS users.