Design System Tactics.

Whether you're starting fresh or maintaining a mature system, this growing collection of tactics is designed to help you make progress at every stage.

Improvements & Usage Audit

A cross-discipline audit to uncover how teams are using (or avoiding) your design system. By mapping real experiences and collecting feedback, you’ll surface pain points and opportunities to improve usability and impact.

When to use it

Use this when system complaints start popping up, adoption stalls, or before planning improvements. It also works well as a recurring check-in (every 6–12 months) to stay aligned with how the system is really being used.

Steps

  1. Gather
    • Invite 3–6 people from key disciplines (design, engineering, product).
    • Ask them to map their workflow with or around the system.
    • Encourage honest feedback—your role is to learn, not lead.
  2. Review
    • Pull pain points and notes into post-its.
    • Group by theme to build a heat map of common issues.
    • Focus on patterns and root causes, not isolated complaints.
  3. Prioritise
    • Summarise each theme with a short description and how often it came up.
    • Rank by frequency and impact.
    • Find links between themes to tell a cohesive story.
  4. Explore Solutions
    • Run follow-up workshops to dig into top issues.
    • Look for fixes that solve multiple problems—great for quick wins.
    • Use this momentum to align the team and kick off improvements.

Outcomes

  • Clear picture of current system pain points
  • Prioritised improvements backed by real user insight
  • Shared artefacts to align your team and shape the roadmap
  • Quick wins and a repeatable, user-led improvement process

Related tactics

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Choosing a Governance Model

Decide how to manage contributions and decisions for your design system.

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Crafting System Principles

Define core principles to guide design and development decisions for consistency and alignment.

Component Discovery & Review

Component Discovery & Review

Collaborate with teams to shape and review components before finalising designs.

Cross-functional Show & Tell

Cross-functional Show & Tell

Share work across teams to gather feedback and build alignment.

Design-Developer Collaboration

Design-Developer Collaboration

Foster collaboration and communication between design and development teams.

Cross-Brand Consolidation

Cross-Brand Consolidation

Unify multi-brand systems to streamline updates and ensure consistency.

Component Exploration

Component Exploration

Explore multiple design directions for a component before settling on the final version.

Design Crit

Design Crit

Get structured feedback from your team to ensure designs meet goals and quality standards.

QA Process

QA Process

Establish a consistent quality assurance process to catch bugs and misalignments early.

Design System Office Hours

Design System Office Hours

A recurring space for support, feedback, and system insights.

Design-Developer Pairing Practices

Design-Developer Pairing Practices

Create paired design and development workflows to improve collaboration and reduce friction.

Spec Walkthrough

Spec Walkthrough

Review and clarify design specifications with your dev team before implementation.

Crazy 8s Sketching

Crazy 8s Sketching

Rapidly sketch 8 design variations in 8 minutes to explore diverse solutions.

Platform-Specific Overrides

Platform-Specific Overrides

Define when and how to override design system components for specific platforms.

Global Component Audit

Global Component Audit

Review and improve the quality, consistency, and accessibility of your system’s components.

How to Split a Design System

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Split your system for scale, while keeping shared foundations in place.

Contribution & Review Model

Contribution & Review Model

Set up a structured, collaborative way for teams to propose and shape contributions to the system.

Content Strategy Integration

Content Strategy Integration

Integrate content guidelines into your design system for a cohesive experience.

Design to Code at Scale

Design to Code at Scale

Align design and engineering for consistent implementation.

Creating Guidance Pages

Creating Guidance Pages

Build clear, accessible documentation for system components and guidelines.

Documentation Writing Workshop

Documentation Writing Workshop

Improve documentation through collaborative writing and peer feedback.

Creating Guideline Standards

Creating Guideline Standards

Create consistent documentation to keep guidelines clear and scalable.

Design System Onboarding

Design System Onboarding

Provide documentation to help new users quickly get up to speed with the system.

Measuring Component Usage

Measuring Component Usage

Track how often and where system components are being used across projects.

Improvements & Usage Audit

Improvements & Usage Audit

Map real journeys to uncover and prioritise system pain points.

Tooling Integration Audit

Tooling Integration Audit

Assess how well your design system integrates with the tools teams are using.

Name That Icon

Name That Icon

Test the usability and discoverability of your icons with users.

Name That Text Style

Name That Text Style

Validate typography style names and usage across teams.

Name That Space

Name That Space

Align your team on consistent spacing standards across products.

Component Retire & Replace

Component Retire & Replace

Identify outdated or redundant components and replace or retire them.

Cross-Platform Consistency Check

Cross-Platform Consistency Check

Check your components for consistency across web and native platforms to ensure a cohesive experience.

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