Design consistency is an important part of creating good experiences for people accessing digital products or services.

A cohesive design not only enhances user experience, but also builds trust and recognition.

Easy and familiar interfaces make it easier for people to navigate services, some of which are complex by nature.

What is a design system?

Simply, a design system serves as a single source of truth for designers and developers. Design systems vary greatly in what they contain across the public and private sector.

What they all have in common is offering a structured approach to design – helping teams to design services or products that are consistent, functionally robust, and easily scalable. This holistic framework not only streamlines the design process but also fosters collaboration and efficiency.

A discovery to explore design challenges in Wales

We recently partnered with Perago to complete a discovery which explored design challenges across the public sector in Wales.

Perago led extensive research to engage the design and development community to understand their needs, challenges, and opportunities for collaboration in creating a consistent design system for Wales.

The research objectives for the discovery were to:

  • assess the engagement of Welsh public sector organisations with the Digital Service Standards for Wales
  • understand current service design approaches and legislative impacts
  • identify diversity in roles and the structural environment of service design teams

Key findings of the discovery

  1. Inconsistent digital service delivery – due to varying levels of capability and resource constraints, digital services across Welsh public sector organisations are inconsistent.
  2. Challenges with current systems – many organisations struggle with digital systems that fail to meet bilingual and accessibility standards, leading to inefficiencies and duplication of effort.
  3. Leadership and buy-in – successful implementation of design systems is heavily dependent on leadership buy-in. A disconnect often exists between senior leaders' understanding of digital services and the practical needs of digital teams.
  4. Barriers to collaboration – organisational silos and lack of standardisation hinder the sharing of best practices and collaboration across different teams.
  5. Procurement issues – current procurement processes do not adequately prioritise digital standards, resulting in the acquisition of suboptimal systems that do not fully support bilingualism or accessibility.

Recommendations

There were 6 recommendations from the discovery:

  1. Explore options for a design system that influences tools, components, and patterns, but not brand.
  2. Design the framework for a minimum skills structure for digital delivery teams.
  3. Identify the exemplary services in Wales, to set a benchmark of what good looks like in practice.
  4. Consider how the Digital Service Standards for Wales could be incorporated into the procurement process.
  5. Quantify the benefits of a more consistent provision of digital services, to the people of Wales.
  6. Influence Welsh public sector leadership teams, so that they better understand the benefits and need for shareable, tested, digital services.

The discovery demonstrates the necessity of shared components to improve the consistency and efficiency of digital services in the Welsh public sector. By addressing current challenges, Wales can enhance the user experience of public services and make big efficiencies.

Next steps

Of the 6 recommendations from the discovery, recommendations 2 to 6 are already a big part of the services and work that CDPS is leading and working on. We do wish to take recommendation 1 forward and further explore options for a design system.

Our next steps are to establish a governing panel to start considering what the criteria for adding items to the Welsh design system should be. Following this, we are keen not to reinvent or recreate design patterns, components or code that already exists and is available. Therefore, we will review what is already available and work with design experts in Wales to formally adopt items into the Welsh design system. Alongside this, we will be working with our communities of practice to better understand what is needed and where there isn’t clarity for them to do their jobs. This will start to create a backlog of items to explore further.

Our next steps are:

  1. assess needs – work with our design communities of practice to understand specific needs
  2. gather resources – assemble a pan-Wales team to set the criteria for adoption of items into the design system
  3. define principles – establish design principles
  4. adopt components, patterns, or items – build on the work that already exists
  5. documentation – develop comprehensive documentation
  6. maintenance – ensure regular updates and feedback loops