Advantages and limitations of design systems in software development
Heikkilä, Vilma (2025)
2025
Tietotekniikan DI-ohjelma - Master's Programme in Information Technology
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2025-04-23
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202504223935
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202504223935
Tiivistelmä
When building large software systems, maintaining visual and functional consistency across a product can be a challenge without a set framework to follow. Design systems have emerged to optimise the development workflow by offering reusable components, elements, and patterns along with guidelines to using them. Component libraries are a common tool in modern interface design, as they help design and implement user inter-faces systematically. Another key component in design systems are style guides, which provide usage guidelines, style standards, and a way to document and organise design materials.
This study was conducted to examine the advantages and limitations of design systems as perceived by software developers, designers, and marketing staff. The study also aimed to explore how the needs of these different stakeholders could be supported by the design system documentation. 10 participants were interviewed in a semi-structured approach, and the results were thematically analysed to find common themes. A design system was also created for a client project, from which participants were interviewed for comparison.
From the interviews, the reported advantages were increased development speed, im-proved consistency, and better communication and collaboration within a development team, as was reported by literature. The limitations included having to customise an ex-isting system to fit the project needs, needing to fix breaking changes from version up-dates in the design system library, in other words, updates that disrupt applications where the code is used, poorly made design systems, unnecessary system bloat, and the required initial effort to use a design system. Making a design system more acces-sible to non-technical stakeholders, like marketing staff, was generally not encouraged by the interviewees. The participants from the client project reported the same ad-vantages as the comparison group, but there were fewer disadvantages mentioned. Developers tended to prefer technical documentation, while designers looked at it as a whole.
Design systems seem to have plausible benefits for software development, but there is no universal solution for all situations, and the needs of each project need to be consid-ered separately to bring the most value. The trade-off between gained value and re-quired work to use a design system should be acknowledged.
This study was conducted to examine the advantages and limitations of design systems as perceived by software developers, designers, and marketing staff. The study also aimed to explore how the needs of these different stakeholders could be supported by the design system documentation. 10 participants were interviewed in a semi-structured approach, and the results were thematically analysed to find common themes. A design system was also created for a client project, from which participants were interviewed for comparison.
From the interviews, the reported advantages were increased development speed, im-proved consistency, and better communication and collaboration within a development team, as was reported by literature. The limitations included having to customise an ex-isting system to fit the project needs, needing to fix breaking changes from version up-dates in the design system library, in other words, updates that disrupt applications where the code is used, poorly made design systems, unnecessary system bloat, and the required initial effort to use a design system. Making a design system more acces-sible to non-technical stakeholders, like marketing staff, was generally not encouraged by the interviewees. The participants from the client project reported the same ad-vantages as the comparison group, but there were fewer disadvantages mentioned. Developers tended to prefer technical documentation, while designers looked at it as a whole.
Design systems seem to have plausible benefits for software development, but there is no universal solution for all situations, and the needs of each project need to be consid-ered separately to bring the most value. The trade-off between gained value and re-quired work to use a design system should be acknowledged.