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Courses/Introduction to Design Systems/What is a Design System?/
Exercise #10

Assessing Readiness for a Design System

Before embarking on a design system initiative, teams must evaluate whether conditions and organizational maturity justify the effort. Six key signals indicate readiness:

  1. Repeated Design Work: Squads repeatedly build similar buttons, dropdowns, and cards in silos.
  2. Inconsistencies Across Products: Conflicting colors, typography scales, and padding create visible UI drift.
  3. Multiple Brands or Modes: The product ecosystem requires dark mode, high-contrast mode, or multi-brand theming.
  4. Inefficient Collaboration: Designers and developers waste sprint time debating trivial visual handoff specs.
  5. Team Growth: Scaling teams struggle with slow onboarding and lack of documented standards.
  6. Tooling Readiness: Shared Figma libraries and reusable component repositories already exist and await formal governance.

Readiness also requires executive sponsorship and a commitment to treat the design system as an ongoing internal product.

Topics

Defining the Idea of a Design System
Recognizing the Key Components
The 4 Layers: Foundations & Design Tokens
The 4 Layers: Core Systems & Components
The 3 Essential Parts: Assets, Documentation, and Processes
Speed, Efficiency, and Brand Coherence
Eliminating Design and Technical Debt
Knowing When NOT to Use One
Connecting People Through a Shared Language
Assessing Readiness for a Design System

From lesson

1

What is a Design System?

Level 1 · Understanding Design Systems

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