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It Takes a Village: Building Organizational Buy-In For Your Design System

Sparkbox
April 21, 2020

It Takes a Village: Building Organizational Buy-In For Your Design System

In working with clients on design system projects (and in our annual Design Systems Survey), we see again and again how building buy-in across an organization is one of the greatest challenges that organizations face with their design systems. In this presentation, Lina shares why building organizational buy-in is critical for a design system, how to go about building that buy-in, and a success story of one of our clients.

Sparkbox

April 21, 2020
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  1. It Takes a Village:
    Building Organization Buy-In For Your Design System

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  2. Lina Calin, Project
    Manager

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  4. 1. Why building buy-in for your design
    system is important
    2. How to build buy-in for your design system
    3. A real world example of building
    organizational buy-in
    Agenda

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  5. Why is Buy-In Important?

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  7. +

    +

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  8. ● Buy-in shows us we built the right thing.
    ● Buy-in shows us we built it the right way.
    ● Buy-in leads us towards a better user
    experience.

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  9. Steps to Build Investment

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  10. 1. Document
    your “why”

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  11. ‘Why’
    ■ What existing problems will your design system
    solve?
    ■ What future problems can the design system
    mitigate?
    ■ What other benefits can a design system bring?

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  12. Document your
    “why”
    Have an immediate example of a problem
    a design system will solve

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  13. 2. Build allies

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  14. Build allies
    1. Pick someone(s) powerful and influential
    2. Pick someone(s) who, with access to a design system,
    will have a lot of impact
    3. Pick someone(s) who can explain the technical
    benefits

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  15. 3. Identify key
    stakeholders

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  17. 4. Understand
    limitations &
    requirements

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  18. Understand the build requirements
    ➔ Any features need to get
    to integration quicker?
    ➔ Any needs of your allies
    that should be
    prioritized?
    ● Tech-specific or
    tech-agnostic?
    ● Budget constraints?
    ● Urgency?

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  19. 5. Make a
    support plan

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  20. Support Plan
    ● Platform & browser support
    ● Regular newsletter with updates
    ● Dedicated Slack channel
    ● “Office hours” with support team
    ● Versioning
    ● Documented process for contribution
    ● Regular user surveys

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  21. “Your technical approach doesn’t
    matter as much as creating a living,
    breathing system that’s flexible,
    maintainable, stable, scalable, and
    successful in the long-term.”
    - Katie Sylor-Miller, Senior Software Engineer –
    Design Systems at Etsy

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  22. Case: University of Georgia

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  24. Document your “why”

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  25. Build allies & identify key
    stakeholders

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  26. “It's helpful to recognize that you don't have
    to get everyone's buy-in all at once. But you
    do want to be strategic about who you build
    your partnerships with and in what order.”
    - Nancy Byron | Marketing and Communications
    Manager - UGA Online Learning

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  27. Understand limitations of the
    project



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  28. Results

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  29. Buy-In +
    Growing

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  31. Thank you

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