Resources

Here are some resources that have shaped my thinking on systems and design. They’ll encourage you to dig deeper into the topics we’ve covered and will help you expand your thinking on design systems.

Systems thinking

We’re surrounded by systems. The following resources aren’t specifically about design systems. Instead, they examine various types of systems in our lives—how they thrive and how they fail.

• Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows. This is an accessible primer on systems thinking. It will help you learn the conceptual tools and methods behind systems thinking and how you can use them to drive change. These methods are valuable as we try to implement and gain adoption for a design system.
• A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. A Pattern Language has been incredibly influential in design-systems thinking. What’s most interesting to me is how patterns connect to other patterns to solve a problem.
• The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander. If A Pattern Language documents patterns, The Timeless Way of Building provides the framework and philosophy underpinning them. I especially like the concept of creating systems that feel alive, which Alexander goes back to throughout the book.
• Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott. This book is a heavy read. I find it important and necessary, though, because it explains how many systems that were designed to improve the human condition failed because they ended up only improving conditions for the makers of that system.
• The Nice Try! podcast from Curbed. Do my coworkers think my constant comparisons of design systems and failed utopias is weird? Probably. But hear me out. Utopian cities were designed with the aspiration that society could be improved through a system. Many of them failed because they were so lofty that they didn’t consider how real people behave. So much here about designing real-world systems for people applies to our digital systems work.

Design

There’s so much about the design process that I didn’t get to cover in this book. Thankfully, there are lots of good resources to help you develop your design language.

• Design Systems by Alla Kholmatova. I didn’t cover many of the steps involved in creating a design system, namely because Kholmatova has already done that so well. Read this if you want to learn deeply about the process of creating a design system.
• Interactions of Color by Josef Albers. If you want to understand how the interactions of colors influence how we perceive them, this book is a must.
• Designing Interface Animation: Meaningful Motion for User Experience by Val Head. In this book, Head explains how animation can help improve feedback, orient users, direct attention, and express your brand’s personality. Start here if you want to define animation for your brand.
• “Including Animation in Your Design System” by Val Head (http://bkaprt.com/eds/06-01/). Once you understand how animation should feel for your brand, this article is a great primer on how to create a motion system—from setting up motion principles to implementation.

Service design

• Orchestrating Experiences: Collaborative Design for Complexity by Chris Risdon and Patrick Quattlebaum. This book goes into serious depth about how to coordinate customer experiences that span multiple channels, touchpoints, and contexts. This is a great next step if you want to build on your ecosystem mapping.