Achieving Balanced Design Consistency
Summary
Key Insights
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Balancing around 30-40% design consistency with 60-70% product-specific freedom prevents cookie-cutter products and fosters innovation.
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Large companies with many acquisitions, like SAP with 72 and Palo Alto Networks with 16, face major design consistency challenges across diverse products.
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Creating network groups with one designer from each product team promotes collaboration and democratic design decisions.
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Visual elements like color palettes are an effective starting point for incremental consistency improvements.
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Sharing consolidated screenshots of disparate products visually convinces leadership of the need for cohesion.
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A service leadership model that fosters collaboration works better than authoritative command and control in achieving design alignment.
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Addressing organizational, cultural, and strategic differences early prevents roadblocks during design consistency efforts.
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Involving product management, engineering, and leadership ensures implementation commitments translate design decisions into production.
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Measuring ROI in design is difficult but can focus on cost savings from reusing components and decreasing duplicate work.
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Onboarding newly acquired companies early into the alignment process facilitates smoother design integration.
Notable Quotes
"Consistency is a key principle in design and in life; to achieve something you have to be consistent and disciplined."
"When things behave the same way, users don’t have to worry about what will happen—that’s the intuitive factor."
"Instead of aiming for 80% consistency, I believe 30-40% consistency with 60-70% freedom works better."
"Put all product screenshots together to clearly show that different products look different and must feel like one company."
"Changing the mindset takes time; like a big ship it takes hours to turn direction."
"Work with majority wins but don’t alienate minority teams; everyone has to sometimes compromise for the greater good."
"A service leadership approach means you’re here to help and orchestrate, not to command and control."
"Tracking implementation commitments after each design network group keeps momentum and accountability."
"Design talent is the most valuable asset; empowering them to be part of decisions retains and motivates them."
"Achieving coherency across products leads to less training, fewer support calls, and more users successfully adopting products."
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