Are you an inventor who has been dreaming about how to design a system software for a long time? Are you in the computer industry and need to build a new system software? If you are one of them, take time to learn more about how to design a system software on this website!
If you have many programs to run, you may need them all to work for your system. Generally, a single software has its own limitation that makes it hard to run other things. Designing an advanced system requires the help from some common tools like system design and performance benchmark software ,for instance.
What is Design System?
Put simply, design system is the process wherein various elements of a larger system are designed – this includes the various modules and components, as well as the encompassing architecture.
It also involves designing how these elements interact with the system, such as the different interfaces required, and how data is processed. This includes making technological choices to meet a variety of factors, such as viability, potential risks to be aware of, and even how long such technology will last before it is outdated. For the latter, the system may even look to identify potential migrations for ongoing, future safety.
Furthermore, it’s worth noting that the ‘system’ here can refer to a variety of aspects, both in terms of software and wider business context. It could include all-covering enterprise architecture, for example, or different systems that need to connect, in part, to the larger whole.
Create the UI Inventory for the Design System
Start by building a catalogue of all the reusable components in your product. This includes patterns, colors, text styles, icons, and even grid systems. Creating an inventory of UI components will reveal inconsistencies in your design language and pave the way for a design system.
Get Organizational Buy-In for the Design System
It is important to get stakeholders and the design team on board before you start building a design system. Explain the inconsistencies that you discovered from your inventory building and how they adversely affect the user experience.
Assess alternatives for obtaining system elements
- Assess the design options
- Select the most appropriate alternatives.
- If the decision is made to develop the system element, rest of the design definition process and the implementation process are used. If the decision is to buy or reuse a system element, the acquisition process may be used to obtain the system element.
Manage the design
- Capture and maintain the rationale for all selections among alternatives and decisions for the design, architecture characteristics.
- Assess and control the evolution of the design characteristics.
Factors that Affect Technology Trade-offs during System Design
Scale of Product
- For example, enterprise software companies that are building system-level software prioritize reliability because customers need to use them. Each change needs to be rigorously tested, and often approved before it can be released.
- Meanwhile, consumer internet companies spend time and money on making their UX delightful so that people want to use them. Reliability is something they’re willing to sacrifice. Since many are web-based applications, they can iterate quickly and release changes frequently.
Time
- Learning new technologies sometimes often takes time. The trade-offs in this instance will be made according to which stack/technology will be in time with the set delivery dates. If switching to a new stack/technology will result in a major shift on the delivery dates and major inconveniences to the stakeholders then the switch can be held off until an appropriate time.
Cost
- On a larger scale Technology decisions are made based on which is more cost effective, where a comparison can be done on which will be more effective between buying an off the shelf system and customizing it or building a new system.
Efficiency
- Technology trade offs are also done based on which technology is more efficient for example choosing between ReactJs or AngularJs for a front end application.
User Experience and Support
- The amount of support and documentation available on a given technology can also be a determining factor on the decisions. Working with Technologies that have a large support base, comprehensive documentation and A good user experience is much easier and take a very short time to ramp up on due to the large amount of resources available to support it.
Maintainability
- maintainability in this case is the ease with which a product can be maintained in order to correct errors, fix bugs and add additional features. Trade-offs decisions will be made based on the maintainability of the Technology
Reliability
- In this case the trade offs are made based on the Technology that performs consistently well and consistently upgrading to more efficient versions.
Scalability
- Technology trade offs are also made based on the technologies that are more scalable and able to handle increase loads efficiently without a break in the system efficiency.
Detailed design
For the last step, we need to dig deeper into major components that are important for achieving the system’s quality requirements.
In this step, we can analyze different approaches to solve a problem, their pros and cons, and explain why we prefer one approach over the other. Tradeoff analysis is an important part of this section. Here might be some example:
Since we need to store huge amounts of data, we may need to partition data to distribute to multiple databases. There might be a question of a celebrity profile and how we will handle such users who have many followers.
How much data we need to cache to speed up the system response time. Where should we need to use load-balancer, etc.?
Here is an example of a detailed design of a cloud file storage service like Google drive.
Build a Multidisciplinary Design Systems Team
You need a team to implement and manage a design system through the entire cycle of product design. Most design systems team need designers and front-end developers. Start by identifying the skill sets you need and then decide on the people who have them.
Establish Rules and Principles for the Design System
Design principles are the shared value system across the entire design system. This includes the technology – CSS in Javascript or something else – that you are going to use for writing the design system; how you are going to distribute the design system; and if you are going to use one of your digital products as the starting point for the system.
Build the Color Palette for the Design System
Colors can impact all areas of your design system. Hence, finalize a color palette first. Decide on primary colors, naming convention, and the system for building accent colors. Refer your design patterns for fixing problems you might encounter when testing the color palette in the product UI.
Build the Typographic Scale for the Design System
Visual design is as much about colors as it is about typography. Decide the typefaces you want to use and the typographic scale for consistent information architecture across all products. Typographic scale also influences the UI. Be sure to test against it.
Conclusion:
A system architecture is the description of how a system is composed of one or more subsystems to work together within a certain environment. A system software is a tool that allows individuals performing the design and development of an operating system.