Success through Openness in Digital Design

Hi everyone. Welcome to my presentation “Success through Openness in Digital Design”.

I am happy to present here today at Open Belgium 2021.

My name is Johan, and I am a designer. I work for a company called Mono.

We're a design studio: we design digital products and services. We were founded in 2014, so we have been around for 6,5 years now.

As a designer, my main focus is on the user experience.

I try to create meaningful connections between screens, to create quality design for digital products and services.

I often joke that I just draw boxes and arrows all day.

When I try to explain someone my job I talk about how someone has to decide where the button goes, and how you move from one screen to the next.

What is the content of the screens? What is the user experience like?

There are some horrible user experiences out there. Almost everyone might have a memory of spending a lot of time on your computer trying to get things to work, for example when doing your taxes.

But things are getting better. We have Itsme now. And in general we've moved from the dark ages of software to a baseline expected quality.

We use our mobile devices and we see what's possible in terms of the user experience. How can we bring that to other parts of computing?

The baseline quality that is achieved in general is increasingly publicly visible. Many major companies and governments decided it's better to publicly share what they have, instead of keeping it behind locked doors.

They have open sourced their code on platforms like Github. They have publicly available design systems, that are freely accessible on documentation websites.

The fact that anyone can look up open source code and can see what their design systems look like, leads to an overall increase in quality everywhere.

It solves internal access problems but it also opens up a conversation about what quality is with a wider community.

Sharing can lead to interesting results where one person takes your work and remixes it to find another use for it.

As a designer, I regularly look at other design systems to see how they do things, and try learn from that. When I have to design a specific pattern, I can look at existing research.

For example, recently I was working on a design where I had to ask for date ranges that were tied to legislative periods. For example the start of a government legislation and the end of it.

This design problem is related to dates that might be in the future, might be in the past, but that are probably 4 years apart. What is the best design pattern to ask for these dates?

gov.uk's design research suggests that simple fields are better than datepickers.

But we might also want to employ a range datepicker.

This is an example of a design pattern that can be defined and re-used by a larger community.

So the next person who has to deal with this problem, doesn't have to think about it that much, but they can choose what is already researched.

As a designer, I like to contribute back to the community. A lot of things I learn I post on my personal blog or on the Mono website; I make YouTube videos when things need a visual example.

With our company we also sometimes bring together the community for events. We've organised an event around design systems 2 years ago. I wanted to organise an event a year ago, but unfortunately it got cancelled due to you-know-what.

I have started quite a lot of projects, many of which have open source code. The reason I contribute back is because I know it will make my work better. By having a public eye on it; by discussing it, by looking at a problem with a bigger group, the work increases in quality.

One of my favorite design tools is called Figma.

Figma is like Google Docs for designers.

Last year, Figma released a new community feature where designers can share their work. People can duplicate and remix work from other designers.

At Mono, the company I work for, we've started sharing design files to the community. Many other companies and organizations have shared their design files as well.

For me this is a logical next step: it is like open source code, but for design.

The design files published on Figma community are marked by default with a Creative Commons Attribution license. The fact that this all happens out in the open empowers everyone to be able to learn and get better.

(Editor's note: Mono's Figma profile can be found here.)

A few slides back I talked about building on other people's work.

The last few years we have seen the rise of the “design system” in general. A design system is a cohesive set of guidelines, rules and patterns that help a team to design and develop better digital products and services.

We used to have brand styleguides, which was only about the visual aspect. How to present a brand? A design system is about much more.

Design systems from global leaders are out there in the open. The codebases are often freely accessible and permissively licensed.

For example. IBM's design system is called Carbon. Shopify's design system is called Polaris.

These systems provide extensive examples on how to use them; with freely downloadable templates and tutorials. These are examples from private companies, but a lot of examples from governments exist as well.

In the Netherlands, a design system initiative was started in September 2020, called Design System NL.

A community is working together on bringing a government-wide design system.

In the Netherlands, a design system initiative was started in September 2020, called Design System NL.

A community is working together on bringing a government-wide design system. It is in its infancy but it is looking promising.

In the UK, the GDS team (GDS stands for Government Digital Service) started the Gov.uk redesign around 2011.

This redesign project is comparable to the redesign of Vlaanderen.be in Belgium.

Out of this project, the GDS sytem was born. In ten years they have built one of the strongest digital teams and proved to be example for the world how a government digital service can run.

And this excellence in service is backed by a design system.

The GDS team has been quite prolific in sharing their learnings. From blogging to presenting about the work, their journey on how to build a community and how to become more efficient is an example we could learn from.

In one of the presentations you can find on YouTube about this project, it was mentioned how the gov.uk design system unified more than 2000 different government websites with a different look and feel to a cohesive whole.

The sharing of design lessons is crucial. Design teams across the world benefit from that research.

Now, how do you organize agreement and disagreement? People have opinions. Someone might think it should be A, another person is leaning towards B.

The Gov.uk projeect has its own governance logic for their design system, where design discussion around improvements is open.

Components and design patterns are marked with flags like a “beta” flag to show that there is discussion around the component, welcoming people to contribute.

Design decisions are held in the open and progress is tracked in public.

Now, how do you organize agreement and disagreement? People have opinions. Someone might think it should be A, another person is leaning towards N.

The Gov.uk projeect has its own governance logic for their design system, where design discussion around improvements is open.

Components and design patterns are marked with flags like a “beta” flag to show that there is discussion around the component, welcoming people to contribute.

Design decisions are held in the open and progress is tracked in public.

Now, how can we relate this back to Belgium?

We have long had open data initiatives. The usage of open source to create software is a given.

Belgium hosts FOSDEM. A Belgian came up with Drupal. We've had iniatives like AppsForGhent and Digital Belgium.

There are plans to do something with new technologies like Solid.

But all of this is in the development sphere. What about design?

But when I look at the state of open design in Belgium, there are no strong initiatives yet to build things together.

There are simply no open source and open design iniatives out there.

There are some closed source government design systems, but there is not a lot of conversation around them.

As part of the COVID recovery plan, the European Union has provided Belgium with funds to work on the digitization of the country.

Two focus points are Belgium's social services and the justice system.

The current plans are what they are: plans. But I feel that the digization of these systems needs more definition.

What will we do with the funds in practice? Will we spend it all on development or will design and user experience have a place?

As a designer, I am thinking. Should we not have an open design system on the Federal and Regional levels?

This would lead to an overall quality increase in what is being put out there.

What if there was a BDS; a Belgian Design System?