When you are an early stage security startup, there are a lot of design decisions to make to grow your product faster.
1. How early should you involve UX design?
2. Should you hire or outsource?
3. Do you really need a design system to start, or should you create one later?
Today, we’ll answer the third question and make a case for why you should start with a design system if you want to grow fast.
A quick backstory on design systems
A design system is a comprehensive set of guidelines, standards, and components that are used to create consistent and cohesive user interfaces (UI) and user experiences (UX) across a product or platform.
We’re not the only ones who think design systems are critical
Figma ran an experiment in 2019 and found that designers using a design system completed tasks 34% faster.
Of the companies Forrester surveyed in 2020, 65% said they use a design system.
Four ways they help you grow faster
1. Consistent UX = user growth
Reusable, user-verified elements, patterns and components ensure the user experience (UX) is consistent throughout the product. If the product is easy to understand and use, then it reduces user confusion. This means faster onboarding, higher adoption, and greater retention.
With a design system driving the UX, you will grow your user base faster.
2. Patterns help you move from concept to development faster
Existing patterns can be reused across multiple parts of your product. This means designers and developers are not reinventing the wheel over and over. This drastically speeds up the creation of designs, prototypes, and development.
Developers can leverage the design system's library of pre-built UI components, styles, and templates to quickly create new features or update existing ones, to ultimately accelerate time to market. This can help you iterate on your product faster, release updates more frequently, and stay ahead of the competition.
3. Systems are scalable
Design systems force everyone to think bigger than just the current screen. Not having one creates technical debt for your team.
So many times, we’ve come in and reimagined the first version of a product where each view was a “snowflake” – full of unique elements found nowhere else. This added to development time on creating and maintaining each of these unique views and elements.
Don’t get me wrong, as the product grows and evolves, the design system should evolve with it. But a good design system informs how a new feature should look and act. It forces the team to either follow the established rules or (when necessary) change a rule.
4. Increased collaboration = increased speed
As your product grows, your team will grow too. A design system serves as a single source of truth by establishing design and development standards. They make it easier for new team members to communicate and align on UI/UX decisions.
This collaborative approach can help reduce rework, improve productivity, and accelerate the overall product development process.
It all comes down to this
A well-designed and well-implemented design system can absolutely help grow your cybersecurity product faster. It can streamline your design and development processes, enhance user satisfaction, and keep you ahead of the competition, ultimately driving faster growth for your product.
Next step
Need help with this stuff? We’ve created design systems that cybersecurity teams are still building on top for years to come. So…ask us anything about cyber security design systems. No strings attached.
"We have been able to build upon the designs [Sodium Halogen] provided for years even as our own products continue to evolve.
We highly recommend involving them in the earliest stages of research to help guide UX, presentation, and visualization of research results to help stake holders understand the benefits provided by powerful new capabilities. We look forward to continuing to collaborate with them for years to come."
Visi, Founder – The Vertex Project
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