Defining and Evaluating Design System Usability for Improved Developer Experience

Abstract: The recent growth of the software industry has drawn attention to strategies aimed at improving collaboration within the development team. Shown to frequently encounter dilemmas associated with cross-disciplinary work are User Experience designers and software developers, whose effective collaboration are essential for the success of the development process. Design systems have evolved as a response to the demand for efficient collaboration as a collection of reusable patterns and documentation used to establish a common language within software development teams. The popularity of using design systems within software development projects has grown rapidly in recent years, but little research has yet been conducted on its usability in development work. The goal of this thesis is to study design systems from a developer perspective, and evaluate its ability to facilitate the collaboration within software development teams. By building upon previous work on developer experience, this study proposes a method for assessing design system usability from a developer perspective. In this study, participating software developers were tasked with implementing user interface design in code with the help of a design system, followed by interview questions based on the Cognitive Dimensions Framework. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Results provide insights into design system usability and developer experience. Findings include aspects of design system usability in general, such as the importance of developers' autonomy and flexibility of the system, as well as implications from the tested method in particular, such as the relevance of context of implementation. The results implicated an inherent dilemma of approaching design system development through conventions and best practices rather than with a systems theory and systems thinking perspective.