The new business case for design systems
Design systems have evolved from static libraries to key drivers of business revenue, customer loyalty, and product strategy. Here’s what you need to know about how to track and communicate the value of your design system, based on new research from the Design Executive Council (DXC).
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While design systems have long been a driver of consistency at scale, their ROI looks different today than they did even a couple years ago. Many design systems leaders have wrestled with how to make the business case to executive stakeholders, who may have seen design systems as cost centers, rather than strategic investments. As a result, the conversation about value has often centered on productivity gains—less rework and faster handoffs—but operational efficiency is only part of the picture.
Today, organizations are investing in design systems to scale their product offerings, improve customer retention and loyalty, expand globally, and raise the bar on craft. Some organizations are even able to measure the impact of design systems on revenue growth. New research from DXC explores what this evolution looks like in practice, based on interviews with companies that are leaning on design systems to solve a wide range of challenges at different stages of growth. Here, we’re sharing their takeaways, along with recommendations for how you and your team can prove the impact of your design systems with insights and data points that land with business leaders.
Read the report from DXC to learn how companies at different stages of growth measure the value of their design systems.
Tying design system impact to customer outcomes
Most organizations already have key metrics that track customer health, like adoption, retention, engagement, and satisfaction. DXC found that many teams align design system value to these metrics, tying their work to outcomes leadership already prioritizes. For example, the team at Freshworks credited its new design system with a 28% reduction in customer service costs and improved time-to-resolution on support tickets.
Like Freshworks, SAP not only uses customer health metrics to measure their design system’s value, but to improve it. The team collects over a million data points from users via in-app surveys to feed back into the design system.
Linking design system value to customer satisfaction doesn’t just help Freshworks make the business case for investing in a design system; it also gives the team a clear roadmap for improving the customer experience overall. After hearing from customers that they had trouble knowing where to start during onboarding, the team spun up a new workstream to reduce friction for new users. They set out to improve customer satisfaction by trying to better understand where customers struggle and how they feel during onboarding. According to DXC’s report, “[Freshworks’] goal is to measure whether design choices reduce friction, boost task resolution, and increase product ‘stickiness.” They track customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, A/B testing, and funnel diagnostics, and these insights inform the components, patterns, and features they develop.
Scaling company values and principles
At their core, design systems are a way to scale the carefully constructed brand that your team has created. For Linear, this extends to company values. Linear credits its design system as enabling its focus on craft and quality, which is one of the ways Linear offers a better experience for users. This in turn drives customer loyalty and net revenue retention. To enable this kind of craft at scale, Linear’s design systems team bakes in flexibility from the outset. They maintain their design system as a living system, updating components as needed. “It is less about rigid rules and numbers and more about whether the product feels crafted with intention,” says Yann-Edern Gillet, product designer at Linear.
Read Linear co-founder and CEO Karri Saarinen’s 10 rules for crafting products that stand out.
Tracking how design systems enable global growth
The teams DXC surveyed use design systems to scale into new regions and remove barriers to global growth. It’s not just about speeding up time to market, but also ensuring that products are consistent, on-brand, and culturally resonant. For Hyundai Motor Group, scaling globally means unifying 30+ vehicle models across its three brands—Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis—while ensuring that each feels cohesive. “While the design system ensures that every interface feels native in any market, it also retains a unique identity for all the three brands,” DXC says.
To build for a global audience, the team at Grammarly made localization a key part of their design system’s strategy from the jump. They hired in-house linguists to capture culture nuances, and made right-to-left readability a key design systems input.
Dispersed teams in North America, South Korea, and Poland use the design system as a shared foundation that keeps experiences consistent across languages and regions as they navigate different hardware constraints, display sizes, and cultural nuances. To ensure that interfaces meet their standards, the team at 42dot—Hyundai Motor Group’s AI and mobility platform company—even uses custom Figma plugins to test multilingual UX.
Measuring internal productivity and satisfaction
Design systems can create a shared language and break down silos between design and engineering. At 42dot, the design system in Figma operates as a source of truth and encourages design and development teams to work together from day one. For example, designers hold weekly crits that engineers are welcome to join. As a result, engineers are able to see potential implementation challenges around the corner. “Engineers and designers finally speak the same language. That shared understanding has transformed how we ship,” says Chris Jacobs, principal product designer at 42dot.
While some teams prefer tracking more qualitative measures, improved collaboration can have real business impact. Grammarly ran an internal survey and found that their design system saved design and development teams 25% in their work week.
The team at Notion also sees improved collaboration and workflows from design systems, angling towards tracking “sentiment signals” anchored in the team’s workflows. Engineering and design work together to align on quarterly priorities, and they share the responsibility of design system maintenance. The team relies on continuous, iterative feedback in shared forums, rather than formal handoffs. “Instead of just waiting for formal reviews, feedback also moves naturally through team channels—a quick emoji or a note of appreciation signals how well changes resonate and keeps the momentum high,” reads the report.
Communicating value to stakeholders
In an ideal world, design systems and the visual consistency they enable would speak for themselves. The reality is that many teams need to create a business case for resources to maintain and scale their design system. Driving cross-functional buy-in and advocacy is key: Grammarly built a network of 10 advocates across design and engineering to enable the rest of the organization and drive design system adoption. The program was so successful that the engineering team offered to trade headcount in exchange for further investment in the design system.
For some companies, it’s about elevating the design system to the C-suite and beyond. SAP Chief Design Officer Arin Bhowmick surfaced the company’s design system at the board level, making it a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that the team tracks via Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). Arin also personally invests his time, spending 10 hours per week on design reviews and ensuring consistent adoption.
In addition to being drivers of efficiency, design systems can also play a strategic role in higher-level business objectives, from inputs like time savings, to outputs like customer retention and revenue. And as teams adapt to the AI era, design systems are the key to elevating craft and maintaining consistency at scale. Learn more about how to measure, scale, and communicate the business value of design systems in the full report.
