The Future of Design Systems is Marketing | Figma Blog (2024)

If you work on a design systems team, I bet you’ve hit some walls trying to drum up excitement and buy-in for your system. You’ve probably sent countless Slack messages, organized presentations, and hosted under-attended training sessions. As someone who has worked on design systems for years, I know firsthand that simply building a great system isn’t enough—you need to actively market its value to drive adoption.

What if we started treating design systems as products themselves, requiring a go-to-market strategy to succeed within organizations? By crafting compelling narratives, identifying champions, and measuring impact, design systems teams can position their work as an essential cornerstone of how organizations design and build digital experiences. This marketing mindset turns design systems from nice-to-have toolkits into must-have instruments for your team.

Build it, but will they come? The art of marketing your design system

In my time at Figma, I’ve talked to dozens of design systems teams looking to drive adoption and prove the value of their work. Now, more than ever, it’s important to think, strategize, and execute like a marketer. Here are some of the tactics and strategies for helping you position your design system as an integral asset—whether launching anew or revitalizing existing efforts.

Get to know your target audience

First and foremost, you need to be confident that your design system resonates with the needs of your audience. Finding product-market fit is an ongoing process of exploration, communication, and iteration. It requires a nuanced understanding of your audience—what drives them, what concerns them about new tools, and how do they perceive the system’s value in their daily work? This means immersing yourself in the daily realities of designers, developers, and decision-makers—identifying not just their challenges, but also understanding their unstated frustrations and desires. What gets under their skin? What are they craving that they don’t even know they need yet?

Engaging in this level of audience understanding is not unlike the initial stages of product development, where user research is paramount. Interview people across your Product Design and Engineering (PDE) organization—from individual contributors to leadership. Each level offers unique perspectives to inform your strategy. Start conversations discussing existing processes, bottlenecks and goals, before diving into specifics about your design system.

Think like a campaign strategist

Developers, designers, project managers—they all speak slightly different dialects of the same language. By creating and fine-tuning a pitch to each group’s specific needs and concerns, you ensure that the proposition for your design system is heard loud and clear.

• For designers, highlight how the system enables creativity, while ensuring brand consistency.
• Developers will likely care more about reusability and efficiency gains. Share how the system facilitates reusability, standardization, and a frictionless workflow between design and code.
• And for decision-makers, emphasize ROI through accelerated speed-to-market, reduced technical debt.

Part of this means addressing hesitations and concerns head-on. Understand why some may be reluctant to adopt or invest in your design system—like concerns around flexibility, technical limitations, or implementation overhead—and craft messaging that addresses these objections, converting skepticism into enthusiasm.

Get the word out: Going to market

This phase demands careful consideration of the channels and formats that best suit each audience. Communicate your design system’s core value and functionality in a way that sparks interest without overwhelming–you can always link to resources with more detail if people want to go deeper. Here are some strategies for how you can get your message across are:

• Host engaging hands-on workshops and FigJam sessions.
• Publish informative, yet concise documentation.
• Produce short videos highlighting real-world use cases and benefits.
• Schedule presentations at relevant team meetings and events.

Timing is everything. Capitalize on moments like product launches, company meetings, or quarterly planning sessions to amplify your message, and steer clear of periods when your audience is likely to be disengaged or preoccupied, such as late Friday afternoons, around holidays, company-wide events, or involved product launches. And remember, building awareness is an ongoing effort. If you don’t see immediate traction, that’s okay! Companies make marketing moments not only during a launch, but continuously—and you can use this same approach through updates and evangelism.

Building influence through advocacy

Identify internal advocates and influencers who can champion the system and equip them to rally others. These could include senior designers, respected developers, or product leaders who have sway and see the system’s potential. Consider formalizing their advocacy through performance reviews or a program where members earn recognition for contributions like creating new components, giving training sessions, or writing educational content. This fosters a culture that highlights the system’s importance and impact.

By empowering a mobilized group of internal experts and formalizing incentives, you create a powerful flywheel effect of grassroots promotion, enablement, and lasting adoption. This can attract and retain a wider audience over time. A community not only supports the system’s current users but also welcomes new ones, creating a dynamic environment where feedback fuels continuous improvement.

Measuring success

Establish clear success metrics for your design system in terms of adoption, engagement, and satisfaction. Think of it like a game where you’re keeping score on how many people are actually using the system: how many show up eager to learn at your workshops, and how many roll up their sleeves to help make the system even better? It’s about setting clear markers for success, like aiming for most of your design and development teams to use the system regularly, getting a packed room for training, and building a buzzing community. Specific metrics to track could include:

• Number of teams or projects using the design system
• Contribution rates: people creating or updating components
• Attendance at trainings, workshops, community events
• System usage telemetry: component inserts & detaches, library usage, et cetera

Set ambitious but achievable targets, like aiming for 70% of product teams using the system within six months. Monitor progress and share wins. An actively engaged community will provide a feedback loop to evolve your design system into an ever-more integral asset.

Stepping into the marketing spotlight

Design systems are a force for unifying creative visions, streamlining processes, and empowering teams to build incredible user experiences with efficiency. But to maximize this impact, design systems teams need to move beyond a build-it-and-they-will-come mentality. Driving adoption requires thinking, planning, and executing with a marketing mindset.

It’s time to embrace wearing the marketing hat. By proactively raising awareness, building advocacy, and proving impact, you’ll transform your design system from a helpful utility into an indispensable centerpiece of how your organization crafts amazing digital experiences. The work won’t always be easy, but the payoff of an enthusiastically embraced design system will be well worth the effort.