Design System Insights

Design System Maturity Assessment

The Design System Maturity Model helps teams self-assess and understand where they are and where they want to be in order to create an actionable roadmap. This framework provides checkpoints that teams can vote on as strongly covered, partially covered, or not covered at all.

An interesting aspect of these discussions is that different team members may have varying understandings of specific elements, making it a valuable exercise for team alignment.

Team Compositions and Complexity Evolution

Team structures and complexity increase with design system maturity:

Level 1 - UI Kit: Mostly ad hoc contributions with minimal structure

Level 2 - Design Library: Introduces processes around usage and maintenance

Level 3 - Design System: Multiple disciplines connect together - design, content, engineering, and accessibility

Level 4 - Multi-Product Design System: Utilized across multiple products with design system champions established within each product or portfolio to support implementation

Level 5 - Foundational Design System: Includes product/domain-specific design systems and external contributions from outside the organization

Get the Complete Framework

The Design System Maturity Framework is a work in progress. To access the related checkpoints, how-to guides, and insights from our community events, join our Slack community.