Design That Scales: Creating a Sustainable Design System Practice

As someone who's been immersed in the world of component libraries and design systems for nearly a decade, I approached Dan Mall's "Design That Scales" with a mix of curiosity and a bit of skepticism - could this book offer something new? The answer, delightfully, is a resounding YES!Mall's book is a breath of fresh air in a field that's often bogged down by overly technical or opinionated perspectives (just try Googling "digital design systems"). His approach to design systems is beautifully pragmatic, easing readers into the concept without overwhelming them. The technical aspects, while present, don't dominate the narrative, leaving room for interpretation and adaptation to different contexts.What truly sets this book apart is its practicality and real-world applicability. Mall guides readers through the creation of design systems that can effectively scale across large organizations and diverse products (a topic we don't hear enough about!). He advocates for embedding design systems into the core of the product development process, not merely as an afterthought.Key areas covered include:- Best practices for organizing and documenting components.- Strategies to gain executive buy-in and align stakeholders.- Transitioning from legacy codebases to modern design systems.- Integrating design systems into product workflows, from design handoff to engineering.- Balancing design consistency with the flexibility needed for innovation.- Approaches for maintaining and evolving design systems.- Measuring success and demonstrating the value of design systems (super important!).Each topic is tackled with clear, actionable advice, grounded in Mall's extensive experience. This book doesn't just theorize; it provides a roadmap for companies serious about implementing sustainable design systems for the long term.As a "seasoned" professional in this field, I've studied numerous design systems, and "Design That Scales" stands out for its practical, experience-based insights (not to mention its lovely cover design). It's well-regarded among practitioners for good reason. Whether you're just starting or looking to refine your existing systems, this book is an invaluable resource.

I work in technology consulting and I've seen countless companies in various states of developing a design system but rarely in a state of having successfully deployed one. This book should be required reading for anyone debating a design system for their company.The book does a fantastic job of outlining the major pitfalls and considerations one needs to take when setting out to create a design system for their organization. Design systems are one of those things that seem like an easy win for efficiency but are fraught with hidden complexities and costs. Most companies do not properly commit resources to building and maintaining these systems and often take the wrong approach out of the gate which is destined to result in failure.The frameworks outlined in this book are clear and easy to follow. They mirror my own real-world experiences of what it takes to really create a scalable design system at a large organization. That's not to say I didn't learn anything, I found many of the chapters dove deeply into the foundations of design systems that I felt I understood implicitly but couldn't articulate as well as the book does. This book has been quite helpful for me as a consultant to enable me to better discuss these pitfalls and solutions with client's in the same position.I highly recommend this book to anyone who works in software development and especially to anyone considering or in the process of building a design system for their company.

I expected this book to be full of ideas that were obvious and extremely technically oriented. This book has a lot of insights into system design that are really insightful and make you take a step back from your preconceived ideas. And while there is a fair amount of technical talk, I never felt out of my depth, or like it was the most important aspect to focus on.The best part of this book was mentally pointing out just how boneheaded my previous, Fortune-500 employer was about many of these design aspects featured in the book. It was almost like a checklist of how badly some companies handle scalability. It also makes me want to send a copy of this to my previous boss.

I really appreciated how relatable the soft skills content and strategy was for implementation within different teams with different nerds. It really helped provide some clarity on some on hot topic conversations our team was actively having. Easy read and very insightful — I highly recommend.

For being a book for designers (plus its price), I would expect at least some standard of printing quality. Images and titles are blurry, they look like newspaper.I would return it and ask for another book, but reading other comments I see others had the same issue. Pity.

perfetto

Not sure about the content, but the print quality is poor. Images and titles are blurred, that’s why it doesn’t worth the price. Probably there was a problem with the print run.