5 Reasons why you should outsource your Design System
While it can seem scary or counterintuitive to outsource something as critical as your Design System to an outside designer or agency, there are a lot of compelling reasons why it makes sense for a business.
1. Gets rid of log jams
At the end of the day, a design system is really just a series of decisions a product team covenants to follow. We will use this dropdown instead of that dropdown. We agree to use these colors instead of all the colors. The list goes on.
So the bigger your company and the more senior your team members, the more decision makers you have. And, it goes without saying, that if a lot of people have to agree on many things you’re going to run into some snags. Bringing in an agency to take on your Design System not only offers an outside perspective, but it helps wrangle the cats. Bottom line? It’s easier to build consensus with a large group of people and sidestep company politics if you’re doing it as an outsider.
2. Frees up your team to build feature work
If you’re a small company (and even if you’re a large company) you may only have one or two designers. Often companies are forced to forego establishing a design system for the sake of maintaining speed. However, by avoiding creating a design system, those same companies soon find themselves bogged down by a lack of framework. Outsourcing the design system allows companies to keep their limited design resources focused on feature work, not buried in the weeds of a design system.
3. It’s a LOT faster
Any designer that’s created a design system from scratch will tell you there’s a steep initial learning curve. Hiring an outside agency that specializes in Design Systems not only avoids that steep learning curve, but will also help you avoid mistakes that could slow your design team down the road. TLDR; would you rather pay someone to learn something on the job or would you rather hire an expert?
4. It’s cheaper
Remember that all important little cliche ‘time is money’? Steep learning curves that need to be overcome cost you designer time, and therefore, money. Not only does hiring a Design System expert save you money with your existing team, it saves you from having to hire another designer prematurely. This is especially true for small companies with a limited runway.
5.It’s better in the long run
Many folks would hypothesize that hiring a Design System expert to create or revamp your design system is great at first but eventually the agency leaves and all that deep knowledge leaves with them.
I’d like to challenge that idea and posit that hiring an outside agency might actually be better in the long run. One of the most challenging aspects of creating an effective design system is figuring out how to effectively govern it. How do you decide who owns the design system? What’s the best process to update the design system? Too strict and you have design bottlenecks…too loose and you have design debt. This challenge is made tougher by the fact that there is simply no one size fits all. Every company is different. Where a particular method works great at one company, it may fail at another.
A seasoned Design System expert has the advantage of creating and setting up design systems at a multitude of companies. They have experience that very few designers have. They will be able to observe how your team works and make clear recommendations that could save you months if not years of fumbling in the dark.
