Even as many organizations are now aware of the
business value of design, committing a significant investment toward design still keeps many leaders awake at night. Growing a design team is only one of many strategies for scaling design across the organization — and one that is difficult to measure the return on. More resources are certain to drive costs, but without a design system that unites experience design, product design, technology, and business operations, the investments rarely pay off.
In simple terms: A digital experience is built-up of User Interface (UI) and visual elements, guidelines to support business logic and user behavior, data, and integrations, like third-party services, APIs, or existing alternative core systems. A design system allows for more of the design work and the User Interface designs to be created and managed as software in tandem with the other layers of the experience.