The Future of Design Systems | Hayley Hughes | Airbnb | Awwwards Conf San Fran

thank you so much for having me today I'm so excited to be here over the past decade I've been a designer at an Art Museum in New York City where I was one of two designers, I've been working at a big tech company in Austin Texas where I was one of 2,000 designers and recently I've been working at a hospitality startup where I'm one of a couple hundred at Airbnb and because of these experiences I learned that broadening the reach of design is more important than limiting the discipline to a privileged few who have mastered the craft, from designing exhibitions to designing systems to designing organizational cultures I've also learned that it's not just product UI that needs our attention any of you who came to this conference by plane likely experienced San Francisco at 30,000 feet, and then as you came in you're at 15,000 and then you're probably right now at 10 or 20 feet up depending on which Hill you're trying to climb to get back to your hotel every day when you go home after this conference and somebody says how was it an SF the image on the right is likely the one that you'll describe as that's our human scale default experience if we use these city images as a metaphor for different representations of the same problem it's systems-thinking that encourages us to embrace complexity and describe more than the street view to see patterns map cause and effect relationships and rationalized systems so today I'll be sharing some examples of design systems that are operating on many different levels to show that the current way that we've been defining them limits the possibilities for what can be included in them defining design today is messy business design is so many things it's a field it's a process it's a proposal it's an outcome and designers are supposed to be good at all of it but at the intersection of all these different types of design is different types of relationships relationships between what we make and what we think relationships between the people that we work with who may have a very different definition of design and relationships between products and users all driven by small decisions that we make over time with so many decisions to make systems are put in place to govern the smaller decisions that the organizations have already aligned around and to automate rote tasks that designers used to do like drawing certain rectangles ask any designer today and they'll tell you that they want to make the world a better place design isn't about designers it's measured by whether or not we solved a problem for people and their environment often in design systems talks we celebrate the technical achievements of systems which is great but today I'm going to be talking about how design systems can help businesses make a more efficient resourceful environment and more importantly how they help designers create a human impact today designers are in some kind of relationship with design systems they either make one or they use one or ideally a bit of both and this is because companies are asking designers to facilitate more complex decision making no longer just designing screens and flows we're making decisions about data models machine learning models business models in order to help scale platforms and all of these things have an effect on the human Ariane's so here's a framework for how I'm thinking about the future of Design Systems its scaffolded from Indies ethics framework which I highly recommend checking out I call it the design system hierarchy of human needs so it goes something like this designers make decisions about product UI and those things manifest as components which impacts humans by way of reducing the amount of effort it takes for them to use your product and then at the next level we make decisions about services which show up as user journeys and they impact a higher level need that users have for a soulful human experience at the top sits the high level decisions about what people value which manifests as models as principles as processes which impact human rights an example of a value system might come into play when a startup is creating their business model on the Left if a company decides that they want to share their knowledge or their data their business might manifest as an open-source model which promotes human rights to accessible information and education on the right if a company decides that they value their intellectual capital in a proprietary way then they privatize their business and this promotes the human right to compete in the market or to make a profit these are two of many directions a company could take but in each one there's a system governed by a few key decisions that have already been made which directly affects human needs often when we think of design systems the first thing that comes to mind is product UI but more complex 2nd and 3rd order problems fit into design systems - so now that you're familiar with the framework I'm gonna share with you the systems of components the first order of design systems if you do a Google search on design systems today you'll see that there are more colors and components and if we curated them all into one universal design system we may never have to design another button again in our lifetime right now design systems are defined by how they're manifest and this is problematic because we only talk about what it is that we can see design blogs and companies reference components right in the definition of design systems but the parts add up to something more components just hit the surface of what we can impact it's actually the patterns that Balai them that can save users a tremendous amount of effort and we should be talking more about those for example at Airbnb we use a pattern that suggests a price for hosts to charge based on the information that they provide us about their home on as well as on current local trends in a market like holidays or increased tourism for rentals there are also estimates that we provide hosts that help them make financial decisions based on information we track and that helps them reduce the effort that they would otherwise put into researching the price points and the cost savings so if you're building a component system and you think about this pyramid instead of considering your components as code and design assets it's worth measuring them as a successful measuring success as to whether or not you're bringing value to users in terms of their investment of time emotional energy and the mental and physical effort that they have to use in order to use your product if your patterns aren't increasing a quality experience then no matter how good your components look it's possible that they could be creating repeatable unwanted friction so this is Airbnb product right after the redesign that yielded their design system once the direction was set team the team looked at individual screens and broke out common solutions to user problems by their components they were simply named and setup to be large very modular the components all have their own functionality so when you need a bit of functionality you can use it across different platforms and different contexts if a component doesn't have the functionality that you need then you can make your own component using primitives how it works and how it looks is very specifically defined because at the time Airbnb was trying to solve for the consistency problem so that the entire experience of the app was really cohesive part of the solution was also making sure that components were abstracted enough that they could actually be mirrored in code so our engineers have the same naming as the design file specs no matter the platform its device agnostic and you define it once so that it's built in many different form factors when the language is the same an engineer could build a design without even looking at it just by referencing the name and this is part of the power of a system the relationship that it bridges between designers and engineers as well as between a user and Airbnb product as you can see in the first order of design systems designers no longer just make one-off components their energy is dedicated to defining new parameters and arguments for why a system functions the way that it does to build trust with their engineers and to reduce user effort the second order of design systems I'm going to be talking about today's journey systems even though components are the fuel that feed design systems we know that users don't fall in love with our products because of our component libraries in the second order of human needs we fill the love and belonging side of our design systems by mapping the user experience through journeys an Airbnb the central story that drives desire for our products is the Snow White journey Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs began in the 1930s with a storyboard made to help all of the film's collaborators understand the vision Airbnb CEO was inspired by Disney and wanted to use storyboarding as a way to understand Airbnb x' customer experience so he hired Pixar and brought the company together to design the engine end-to-end experience for hosts and guests storyboards inspire a feeling that words alone cannot express this is my favorite storyboard it's of hosting guests sharing a meal together and laughing like sisters the pictures in a storyboard represent the steps that hosts take along their journey this includes things like considering hosting preparing the space for a guest and building a lasting reputation as a good host in a tech world full of different situations that are constantly grasping for our attention and never really finish creating narratives that start and end satisfies the craving that we have as humans to complete a journey and feel that sense of accomplishment many new journeys have been designed since the snow-white journey at Airbnb and when we make services maintaining journeys is really critical for capturing each moment of the human experience there's also additional decision-making benefits to your company journeys can provide key experience insights and they can also reveal opportunities for where to invest time money and headcount they can also inspire collaboration across teams and I think this is one of the biggest benefits of journey systems so if you've already built components but you haven't yet mapped your user journeys onto your design system there's easy ways to get started how you choose to make your journeys depends on your goals if you want to understand how much surface area a journey exists in the product and whether there are any steps missing a tattoo you ice-creams to your journey boards you can also attach teams and see which teams are working on different parts of the journey in your company maybe certain areas are understaffed via B teams create scorecards for things like test completion or growth sometimes we find that in one phase there are many different paths a user can take the journey columns usually represent larger phases and smaller steps and key moments are the cards underneath each column has data and metrics attached to it from your research teams from legal teams from finance teams and we add user goals pain points and opportunities it's important for journeys to express what the host and guest is doing and what they're unable to do what they're being blocked by and what they actually need what are they motivated by so in addition to that there are other things that you can include things like financial models and pricing you can even include rows that may not have you thought about like unintended consequences or the risk of potential bias and discrimination each journey gives your business a high level and a granular representation of the user experience from 10 feet to 15,000 and this is our 30,000 foot view they can zoom in and they can zoom out to make decisions with all the data that you have at any given moment journey systems are about transforming businesses to invest in human needs instead of always focused on features they visualize abstract data to make things relatable and concrete they promote collaborations across teams and they provide an honest picture of guiding investments and strategy so the third and final order of design systems I'm going to talk about today is my favorite value systems values are shaped by lived experiences some are conscious and others are not we tend to believe that we can think through all perspectives but when we're working really fast we tend to make snap judgments and when we really realized that maybe we've made a mistake we're not really incentivized to go back and fix it Cornell professor Phoebe singers says as we work with technology reflection on our unconscious values should be a core principle for design systems tapping into our unconscious air B&B partnered with News deeply to create a research tool to help us examine our values designers and journalists face really similar challenges we must truly understand the needs and the stories of our communities in order to serve them like a journalist a designer has to be able to ask the right questions another lens is a virtual deck of cards that puts some of the most important questions at your fingertips each question provides context around biases and suggested steps forward the hope is that reflection and slow thinking can lead to more considerate design recently I think that it really has our creative director Jennifer Homme refreshed our illustration style to better reflect people who work at and use Airbnb the most insightful part of her research was when she interviewed her co-workers and they said that illustrations like this one don't reflect them by partnering with Airbnb s employee resource group for people living with disabilities the team directly engaged with people about their lived experience and then they redesigned the illustrations to reflect them I think this shows that design systems have the potential to help designers make the world a better place when we're focused on human rights the rights to be seen and heard and depicted in authentic ways and this goes for employees - for the past eight months I've been working with a team at Airbnb on reducing bias and discrimination in our career framework through research we've learned that experienced designers are doing different types of product strategy and product management work that's been unconsciously excluded by the previous framework words like sees and hears we're not inclusive of people with low vision and hearing and people would ask what is the meaningful difference between certain words like inspires or leads or directs in feedback sessions teams would ask how many times do you need to prove that you can do something before being considered for a promotion and there were a lot of questions about how to better distinguish individual contributions and management I believe that design systems for people's careers are as essential as the components that we use to build our products every dimension of the framework directly impacts people's performance their salary their career development and their sense of accomplishment to remain relevant in the future designers will need to hold themselves and others accountable for their unconscious values which sounds like a really difficult task I think it's the biggest design challenge we have to date back in the 60s Charles Eames described designing a lamp and he said the first step in designing anything was not to ask how it should look but whether or not it should even be it's a timeless and essential question that often goes overlooked in favor of outcomes yet designers are just as valuable maybe more for influencing what a company doesn't make as much as what it does I'm often asked if I think that design systems will replace designers I mean if you think about designing systems through the lens of human needs systems won't replace designers but designers do need to replace our myopic focus on design systems is the way that they manifest move beyond components ask ourselves what other systems can we influence to drive towards an even higher human impact things like financial systems health care systems management system social systems political systems and just as important systems are currently in place where we impact human needs in undesirable ways and how do we fix those maybe our hierarchy is upside down there's no wrong way to stack them but now the components have gotten us so far in reducing human effort what if we spent more time on understanding human rights as the foundation for our systems and started building up from there human rights like access and safety openness tolerance respect dignity inclusion and providing closure to an experience consider which rights you would frame your system around with this way of thinking changed the way that you design and the experiences that you design for if good design is about good business the common denominator is doing good so when designers are freed up to think bigger let's reach for the highest form of human impact and create systems that produce a better world for everyone Thanks

Channel: awwwards.

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Keywords: design systems, design talks, designer, web design, digital design, air b n b, design conference, data models, machine learning, business models, tech, Ind.ie Ethics Framework, ethical technology, Product Design, UI Design, UX, Value system, Component system, Apps, Customer experience, Journey Systems, design agency, Interface design, Ted talk, creativity, Illustration, Product management, Inclusive design, Human Rights, Accessibility

Id: mq984Mc9UVA

Length: 21min 42sec (1302 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2019