Have you ever felt the frustration of using an outdated design system? It can feel like using a thousand-piece puzzle where half the pieces no longer fit. Each time you reach for a component, it’s like rolling the dice to see what will show up. With every page you build, the site morphs into a strange version. Not only does this lead to inconsistency across your product and a poor user experience, but it also drives your team crazy. The good news is that you don’t have to stay stuck in this cycle forever. Design system tools can help you get back on track. This article will help you find the best design system tools for product and experience consistency to minimize the chaos and create a more seamless design process for your team.

One of the best design system tools for achieving your goals is Ion’s design-to-code tool. This solution helps you create a living design system to build products consistently and quickly, improving collaboration and reducing friction for your team. 

What is a Design System?

A design system is a set of standards for managing and scaling design. It includes reusable components, design principles, and guidelines to achieve consistency and efficiency across a company's digital products. 

Key Components of a Design System: Building Blocks for Consistency and Scalability

Design systems: 

• Streamline workflow
• Enhance collaboration
• Maintain brand identity

Design teams create them for scalable and cohesive digital experiences. Design systems provide consistent styling and interaction guidelines for teams. 

For example, a design system might have:

• Standard elements to use in interfaces. It includes input boxes, dropdown lists, and menu structures.
• A list of approved brand colors and fonts. It also guides us on when to use them.
• Standard buttons and other interactive affordances.
• Interaction guidelines. The system includes decisions like using a slide-out panel and determining whether expanding or pinching should resize images.
• A flexible grid system that lays out screens consistently. It comprises things like the styling of cards or content separators.
• Rules about the placement of particular objects. For example, always keep the login/log out and profile icons in the top-right corner of the desktop.
• Lists of icons and what they mean.
• Content guidelines that specify how and when to use content. For example, decide if all menu items should be verbs or nouns. Or determine if the company refers to the user in the first or second person.
• Rules about when to use icons and when to use text as labels.
• Visual guidelines for where certain types of call-to-action buttons should be.
• Rules about using things like auto-save vs explicit save/cancel buttons.

Evolving Design Systems: From Visual Interfaces to Voice-Controlled Experiences

A design system might have many other guidelines. Google's Material Design is an example of a consistent design system. It consists of different types of elements and guidance on when and how to use each component. Design systems extend beyond visually driven tools; they apply to voice-controlled systems, too. 

These systems focus on content and behavior. They provide different but equally valuable features. Effective design systems evolve with time. They adapt as the needs of a product or product suite change. Ideally, elements of a design system are code pieces developers can use in interfaces. This helps build features or prototypes faster. In other cases, they are design elements in prototyping tools for designers to reuse. 

Related Reading

• Design System Documentation
• Design System vs Style Guide
• Design Handoff

Why You Need A Design System?

Design systems can help teams replicate designs quickly using premade UI components and elements. This benefit doesn’t seem particularly impressive when you must create a small number of screens. But when you must coordinate efforts across dozens of teams and thousands of screens, this payoff is substantial. Instead of reinventing the wheel and risking unintended inconsistency, teams can use the same elements repeatedly.

Design Systems Can Help Alleviate Strain on Design Resources

Design systems allow teams to create designs faster for large-scale projects. Since more straightforward UI elements are already made and reusable, design resources can focus less on tweaking visual appearance and more on more complex problems (like information prioritization, workflow optimization, and journey management). As projects grow in size, this payoff becomes increasingly essential.  

Design Systems Create a Unified Language for Cross-Functional Teams

When design responsibilities shift or when teams become geographically dispersed, a design system creates a unified language that reduces wasted design or development time due to miscommunications. For example, the functionality or appearance of a dropdown menu would not be debated since that term is reserved for a specifically defined element within the design system. 

Design Systems Foster Visual Consistency Across Products and Teams

Primarily when teams work in silos, where each product or channel operates independently of the others, the absence of an organization-wide design system can lead to inconsistent visual appearance and experiences that seem fragmented or unrelated to the brand. 

Design systems provide a single source of components, patterns, and styles and unify disjointed experiences to be visually cohesive and appear as part of the same ecosystem. As a bonus, the design system can manage any major visual rebrands or redesigns at scale. 

Design Systems Serve as Educational Tools for Junior-Level Designers

Explicitly written usage guidelines and style guides help onboard individual contributors new to UI design or content creation and also serve as a reminder for the rest of the contributors. 

Ion: Bridging Design and Development with Seamless Design-to-Code Integration

Ion transforms your Figma designs into production-ready code perfectly aligned with your existing codebase and business needs. Our platform bridges the gap between design and development by automatically generating functional code that matches your: 

• Specific component
• Styles
• Design system

We've created a unique solution that empowers non-technical team members to implement visual changes without engineering intervention. Our tool understands your CI/CD pipelines, testing requirements, and component architecture, ensuring that generated code fits seamlessly into your workflow. 

Whether you're updating design elements or creating new features, Ion helps unlock engineering resources by letting designers and product teams contribute directly to the codebase in a safe, controlled way. Start building your application for free today with our design-to-code tool. 

15 Best Design System Tools For Product And Experience Consistency

1. Ion

Ion transforms your Figma designs into production-ready code perfectly aligned with your existing codebase and business needs. Our platform bridges the gap between design and development by automatically generating functional code that matches your: 

• Specific component
• Styles
• Design system

We've created a unique solution that empowers non-technical team members to implement visual changes without engineering intervention. Our tool understands your CI/CD pipelines, testing requirements, and component architecture, ensuring that generated code fits seamlessly into your workflow. 

Whether you're updating design elements or creating new features, Ion helps unlock engineering resources by letting designers and product teams contribute directly to the codebase in a safe, controlled way. Start building your application for free today with our design-to-code tool.  

2. Figma 

Figma is considered the best and most used UI design tool today by a wide margin, according to the Design Tools Survey. As a design system tool, Figma leads the way similarly. Let’s take a look at what Figma does precisely. 

Designers can use Figma to maintain consistency throughout their designs by creating and then reusing: 

• Components (which can have dynamic content, multiple variants, swappable nested instances, and toggleable layers)
• Text Styles
• Color Styles
• Grid Styles
• Effect Styles

Together, they help designers create minimal yet highly flexible design system libraries. It’s the ultimate tool for building design systems.  

Choosing the Right Design System Management Tool to Complement Figma

Figma doesn’t offer a way to create design system documentation. Instead, designers must develop documents using Notion or a dedicated design system management tool and then link to them from the relevant Figma Style or Component. 

That’s right, Figma isn’t technically a design system management tool, but it's certainly much more equipped to be than Sketch and Adobe XD. Figma is a UI design tool with some design system features. Since every designer needs a UI design tool anyway, the question is, what secondary design system management tool should we use with Figma?  

Exploring Design System Tools and Alternatives to Figma for Better Workflow Management

Zeroheight, Zeplin, and Storybook are all terrific choices. Notion isn’t technically a design system management tool, but: 

• It’s well-liked
• Free
• Can be used

Of course, there are alternatives to Figma. If, for some reason, you don’t vibe with Figma, there’s Sketch or Adobe XD. Sketch isn’t available on MacOS, and neither do any design system features beyond being able to create Styles and Components. You can’t create documents with them nor link to documents created using other tools.  

3. Notion 

Although not a design system management tool, Notion is well-liked for its versatility as a writing/documentation tool. Can you use it to hack a design system together? Of course, especially since you can embed Components and Styles from Figma (or something similar) into Notion documents and vice versa (if using Figma) link Components and Styles to Notion documents, keeping everything interconnected.  

Using Notion for Code Documentation: A Budget-Friendly Solution with Limitations

For code documentation, developers can write code into Notion (which is easy since it’s Markdown-based) or embed code components from external tools such as Storybook. 

It’s just not a design system management tool, which is evident when using it and seeing the end result. It’s a manual workflow that can make teams feel exhausted after a while, even causing burnout. But if your design system is small or you’re looking for something that’s free, then you’re looking for Notion. It is, for sure, the best option for those on a budget.  

4. Storybook

Let’s talk about Storybook. What sets Storybook apart from other design system management tools is that it’s primarily aimed at developers. It helps with design system documentation, and the ‘stories’ can even be interacted with since Storybook is a code playground. You can embed the stories into Zeroheight, Zeplin, and Notion or use Storybook as your secondary design system management tool.  

Storybook: A Developer-Centric Tool for Managing Interactive Code Components

These isolated, interactive code components can be linked to UI design tools such as Figma so that designers can check that the implementation looks and behaves correctly. There are no features that inform developers about changes to design systems. 

Developers are somewhat isolated from the design side of things, and designers often say that Storybook isn’t very designer-friendly. With that in mind, Storybook might be best utilized as a code component manager for developers.  

Enhancing Collaboration: Integrating Storybook with Zeroheight or Zeplin

Similarly to Notion, Storybook doesn’t effectively help designers and developers collaborate. So, suppose you want to use Storybook because of its excellent code component management. In that case, ideally, you’ll want to use it with Zeroheight or Zeplin, importing your stories into them for context and convenience.  

5. Zeroheight 

Zeroheight is a secondary tool, meaning that design systems must be created using a UI design tool such as Figma before syncing to zero height, where they can be documented and maintained. 

But why, when Notion is free? The benefit of using a dedicated design system management tool such as Zeroheight is that it can be branded, creating a sense of ownership. Zeroheight design systems automatically show visual previews, are easier to organize, and look far more impressive.  

Streamlining Documentation: Using Zeroheight for Embedded Code Snippets and Style Translation

Regarding documentation, developers can embed rendered code snippets natively with Zeroheight or by importing them from Storybook) or CodeSandbox. To help developers write these code snippets, zeroheight translates design styles to code (although UI design tools already do this, having the feature in zeroheight means less tool-switching for developers).   

6. Zeplin 

Is already widely respected as a design handoff tool that translates design styles to more code languages than UI design tools such as Figma, Zeplin’s recent venture into design system management means that the design systems you maintain with it translate to code well. 

Zeplin can also integrate with Storybook so developers can easily import code components for documentation. But more importantly, Zeplin contextually embeds your documented design system elements into your design handoffs where relevant, which is super impressive and very useful for developers.  

Seamless Design Handoff and Team Collaboration

In addition to Storybook, Zeplin integrates with Trello, Microsoft Teams, Jira, and Slack for seamless collaboration, which makes Zeplin feel more mature and enterprise-friendly than its competitors. Zeplin is undoubtedly the best option for collaboration and maintaining a seamless workflow. 

Zeplin is comparable to Zeroheight in all other aspects—it’s easy to use, and the design systems look fantastic once finished. Overall, if you’re looking for a solution to both design handoff and design system management in a single tool, Zeplin is a terrific choice and would be an asset to your product workflow.  

7. Confluence  

Confluence is a powerful documentation tool used by designers and developers for many years. The platform offers a variety of plugins and options to customize your pages or page tree and integrate development. You can add columns to the pages, and there are over 80 types of content blocks you can use to display your content, providing you with a lot of flexibility.  

Integrating Figma with Confluence: Limitations and Workarounds for Displaying Design Systems

None of these content blocks are designed to display design system elements or designs in general. While there are many elements you can use to create what you want, it requires more time and creativity. 

The Atlassian community has developed a Figma plugin that lets you embed Figma links and preview the files. It only shows previews and does not allow you to specify frames or components. If you want to include the designs, you must link to the files, export them, and upload them to Confluence.  

8. Frontify 

Geared towards Digital Asset Management, the Swiss-made Frontify tool allows editing assets inside the tool itself. It can’t extract a design system from a design file, but it has a Figma plugin, allowing live previews on a frame level. It can show custom code snippets, and a Storybook integration is available. 

It offers robust versioning on the asset level, with an added comparison mode, but no snapshots on the library level. Sharing is simple and can be pretty granular through defining target groups. Integrated analytics allow you to keep track of your assets’ performance.  

9. Pattern Lab 

Pattern Lab is an open-source design system management tool based on the atomic design methodology. Its front-end development environment makes it easy to design and test UI components. 

The most attractive features of this tool are its free plan and open-source nature, which allows for extensive customization. Using Pattern Lab requires some programming expertise. However, it can be a great resource if your organization’s design system draws from the atomic design framework.  

10. InVision DSM 

InVision Design System Manager (DSM) is one of the most comprehensive tools. Like Zeroheight, designers can manage the entire system using a single interactive dashboard. 

What makes DSM unique is that it allows integration with several design tools from InVision, Sketch, Storyboard, and other platforms, keeping everything in a single place. Additionally, it comes with a documentation tool, making it easy to keep track of updates with a single tool.  

11. Adobe XD 

Adobe XD, another popular prototyping tool, provides features for design system management. The terminology used by Adobe XD can be a little confusing—design systems, for example, are called UX creative systems. 

It is an excellent tool for creating and storing components in the cloud without any hassle. Adobe XD’s creative component libraries simplify designers’ tasks by improving collaboration and allowing version control.  

12. UXPin 

UXPin, similar to InVision DSM, is a comprehensive design system management tool. Engineering teams can use it with development tools to ensure that all teams, not just designers, are on the same page. 

One of the best things about UXPin is that it can help designers create an entire design ecosystem. There are several design tools offered by UXPin that can be used to build a comprehensive design system, focusing on: 

• Styles
• Typography
• UI elements
• Branding

13. Supernova

Supernova is an excellent alternative to Zeroheight with a similar layout and features but slightly more functionality. One of Supernova’s best features is automatically “converting design data into code or assets for any tech stack.” You can also include starter templates for developers in your product’s formats, like iOS, Android, React, Angular, Flutter, and others, ensuring engineers always have the correct code and assets at the beginning of every project. 

Supernova’s VSCode extension syncs your design system to the popular IDE, so developers have everything they need in one place. You can also sync Supernova to popular design tools so designers don’t have to download and import files.  

14. Nuclino

Focused on supporting teams with documentation and collaboration, Nuclino is an easy-to-use tool that allows people to simultaneously work on the same page. The tool consists of workspaces that you can fill with documents. Collaboration is supported by making information easy to find through different: 

• Representations
• Visualizations
• Personal tasks
• Comments

They also support embedding designs from Figma, although your file must be published to work. It offers version control on the page level and supports code snippets. 

Personalizable options, like your domain or a custom theme, are absent. Also, the sharing options are limited, which might make it less useful for larger organizations.  

15. Sketch 

Sketch, a tool well known for prototyping and wireframing, can be a great addition to a design system. Sketch libraries are an excellent resource for storing and sharing UI components in a big design team. A library is like all the other Sketch files, containing styles, symbols, and elements. 

When a UI component in the library changes, all the files containing it can easily be updated. This is particularly useful for ensuring consistency and branding in design systems.

Related Reading

• Design System Governance
  
• What is a Design System
• Design System vs Component Library

What To Look For In A Design System Management Tool?

A solid design system must include a style guide. This is a singular source of truth for design rules, detailing components, usage, examples, and visual representations. A style guide helps to document all the best practices so that design teams can quickly get up to speed when working on new projects or transitioning between projects. 

This is especially critical for enterprise design systems where the design teams must follow principles to ensure consistency and branding. 

Start Building Your Application for Free Today

Transform Figma Designs Into Functional Code

Ion transforms your Figma designs into production-ready code perfectly aligned with your existing codebase and business needs. With Ion, you can empower your team to implement visual changes without engineering intervention.  

As a design system tool, Ion automatically generates code that matches your specific 

• Components
• Styles
• Design system

In doing so, we help bridge the gap between design and development. 

A Smooth Design-to-Development Transition

If your engineering team uses a component-based architecture like React, Vue, or Angular, Ion can help ease the transition from design to development so that visual changes get implemented quickly, efficiently, and without the usual headaches. 

Our design system tool understands your CI/CD pipelines, testing requirements, and component architecture, ensuring that generated code fits seamlessly into your workflow. Think of Ion as a translator who speaks both design and development. It enables your team to collaborate and communicate effectively to improve productivity and morale. 

Straight to the Code

With Ion, you can skip the manual coding process and go straight from design to code. Whether you're updating design elements or creating new features, Ion helps unlock engineering resources by letting designers and product teams contribute directly to the codebase in a safe, controlled way. 

When you use our design-to-code tool, you get functional code that matches your existing application architecture. This makes it easy for your team to implement visual changes with minimal effort. 

Related Reading

• Benefits of a Design System
• Best Design Systems
• How to Create a Design System

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