Product optimisation at BT and a design system to help us scale

Dave House is a product designer helping BT develop a design system that can help our developers and design team work more efficiently and consistently.

We’ve formed a new team in BT Consumer Digital to create a single design system for our three consumer-facing brands — BT, EE and Plusnet. We hope to create something that truly brings the many different disciplines within a product squad together and increases the focus on their unique goals by solving common patterns and problems once.

Working on a multi-brand design system team forces you to make important distinctions between what makes a meaningful, robust system and what's needed to retain the essence and style of each unique brand.

We’ll be blogging more about the design system as it grows. But over the last few months, I have found it useful to explore the boundaries of what a design system team should and should not be responsible for, especially in a large organisation.

Big thinking about the role of design systems

This led me to think about design systems through the lens of industrial design, the manufacturing industry and more specifically the design of mid-century air-cooled Volkswagens. I’ve put some of those thoughts in a blog post.

Does your design team use a design system? Let us know how it’s helping you scale your work — or otherwise! — in the comments below.

Photo by Austrian National Library on Unsplash