The effectiveness of a design system cannot be assumed; it must be actively measured and optimized over time. A robust design system should not only streamline design and development processes but also ensure scalability as the organization grows, adapts to new platforms, and handles diverse product requirements.

This article discusses all key metrics you should consider to evaluate the effectiveness of a design system

Adoption Rate

Adoption rate indicates how widely your design system is accepted and utilized within your organization. A high adoption rate means teams trust the system and find it useful. Conversely, a low rate suggests a gap in perceived value, awareness, or usability.

Benefits of high adoption rate: The more teams that adopt the system, the more consistency there will be across your products, leading to a unified user experience and lower design and dev effort. High adoption also often correlates with better scalability.

How to measure

  • Number of projects using the design system.
  • Percentage of teams or designers/developers using the design system components.
  • Measure how many front-end and design teams refer to the system in their workflow.

Measuring method

Automated component usage tracking. By tagging components, teams can use automation to track where and how frequently they are being used in production.

Component usage in the Onfido’s design system. Image by Steve Dennis.

Component reusability

Component reusability measures how often pre-built components from the design system are leveraged instead of custom-built ones. A high reusability rate reflects the design system’s versatility and efficiency.

Benefits of high reusability: Reusability drives efficiency and reduces design and development time. It also ensures consistency across different products, providing a uniform user experience.

How to measure

  • Ratio of reused components vs. custom-built components.
  • Percentage of UI built using design system components.
  • Number of unique components that are used across multiple projects.

Measurement methods

Tracking component imports. Implement analytics in your codebase to track how often components are imported and used. For example, you can track NPM package installs or use analytics to monitor component usage across different applications.

Monitor usage frequency: If using a component library like Storybook, track how frequently different components are being accessed or included in designs.

Design consistency

This metric tracks how well different teams adhere to the design system, maintaining a unified visual language and experience across various platforms and products.

Benefits of consistent design: A consistent design leads to a cohesive brand experience for users, making products easier to use and understand. It also minimizes user frustration by maintaining predictable interfaces.

How to measure

  • Number of design discrepancies or deviations from the system across products.
  • Percentage of screens or UI elements that fully adhere to the design system guidelines.

Measuring methods

Design and code linting: Automated design and code analysis tools can be used to ensure that design components are implemented consistently across the product. Design Lint is a nice Figma plugin that finds missing styles within your designs. It’s perfect for fixing errors in your Design System or designs before handoff. If you want to do code linting, here is a nice tutorial for linting ReactJS and CSS.

Design Lint Figma plugin by Daniel Destefanis.

Manual product audits: Teams can manually inspect products and pages to ensure they adhere to the design system’s visual and UX guidelines.

Contribution rate

Contribution rate reflects how often designers and developers enhance the system by adding new components, improving existing ones, or fixing issues. It signals collaboration and evolution within the system.

Benefits of high contribution rate: Contributions ensure that the design system remains up-to-date, flexible, and capable of scaling. High contribution rates suggest engagement from stakeholders and responsiveness to evolving needs.

How to measure

  • Number of new components, patterns, or improvements added to the system.
  • Number of bug fixes, updates, or design improvements contributed.
  • Percentage of team members contributing to the design system.

Measurement methods

Number of PRs/MRs: Track the total number of pull requests or merge requests related to the design system in a specific time period. This can be done using version control platforms like GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket.

Types of PRs: Categorize PRs based on their nature — new components, bug fixes, documentation updates, or design improvements.

Time to implement

This metric evaluates how much time is saved in design and development by using the design system compared to custom-built solutions. A faster implementation time reflects the efficiency of the system.

Benefits of short time to implement: A well-structured design system accelerates development, reduces redundancy, and allows teams to focus on innovation rather than reinventing common UI components. It can also speed up product time-to-market.

How to measure

  • Reduction in design and development time when using the system.
  • Time saved in creating new components or UI versus custom-built designs.

Measuring method

Velocity task type tracking. By categorizing tasks based on whether they used the design system or not, teams can compare how much time is saved on system-related tasks versus custom work. This comparison helps reveal how much efficiency the system adds to development.

Accessibility compliance

Accessibility compliance tracks how well the design system aligns with accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG). Ensuring accessible design benefits all users, particularly those with disabilities.

Benefits of accessible design: An accessible design system fosters inclusivity and ensures compliance with legal and ethical standards. It also helps to avoid retrofitting accessibility, which can be costly and time-consuming.

Automated accessibility review results using Wave tool. Image by WebAIM.

How to measure

  • Percentage of components that meet accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG).
  • Number of accessibility issues identified and resolved within the design system.

Measuring method

Accessibility scoring. This ensures the system adheres to accessibility guidelines like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which focus on making web content usable for all people, including those with disabilities.

Component accessibility score in design system. Image by Lucid.

Performance impact

This measures how the design system affects the performance of applications, particularly in terms of load times and resource optimization. Poorly optimized design systems can lead to poor user experience.

Benefits of good performance optimization: A performant design system ensures fast, responsive applications, which lead to better user experiences and higher retention. Optimizing for performance also reduces infrastructure costs.

How to measure

  • Impact on page load times, especially when using component-heavy pages.
  • Bundle size contributed by the design system.
  • Usage of optimized assets (e.g., compressed images, optimized fonts).

Measurement method

Page load time. The time it takes for a webpage to fully load when using design system components. Use browser developer tools or tools like Google Lighthouse or WebPageTest to measure page load times.

Google Lighthouse score.

Scalability

Scalability measures how easily the design system can be extended or adapted to various platforms (e.g., web, mobile) and future products. A scalable system should allow growth without significant overhauls.

Benefits of high scallability: Scalability is crucial for organizations that plan to extend their products or services to new platforms or devices. A scalable system allows teams to work more efficiently and stay consistent, even when the product ecosystem grows.

How to measure

  • Track the number of platforms (web, mobile, desktop) where the design system is applied.
  • Monitor the ease of adapting existing components to new devices or contexts.
  • Measure how quickly new products can be launched using the design system.

Measurement method

Component adaptability across platforms. How easily design system components can be adapted or reused across different platforms (e.g., web, mobile, desktop).

Ease of adding new components. The effort required to introduce new components, patterns, or features into the design system without causing technical debt or breaking existing functionality.

User satisfaction

User satisfaction indicates how happy designers and developers are with the system’s ease of use, consistency, and effectiveness.

Benefits of high user satisfaction: Ensuring high user satisfaction internally leads to greater adoption and trust in the design system, while high external satisfaction points to a successful user experience. Addressing pain points identified in user feedback can further refine the system.

How to measure

  • Internal user feedback or survey results from designers and developers.
  • External user feedback on UI consistency, usability, and overall experience.

Measuring methods

Surveys. Regularly gather structured feedback from design system users to gauge their satisfaction and understand where improvements are needed.

Sentiment analysis. Analyze Slack channels, forums, or other internal communication tools to assess the general tone of conversations about the system. Sentiment analysis can help surface recurring issues or frustrations.

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Online UI and UX Design Courses and Bootcamps | Designlab

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Measuring Design System was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.