Why do design system teams also need research?

If you’re working on a design system, research skills aren’t optional; they’re your competitive advantage.

Why? Because design systems are:

• Used by teams, not end users: You need to research how your actual users (designers and developers) work

• Complex to implement: Small UX friction in your system gets multiplied across every team using it

• Hard to measure: Without research, you’ll struggle to prove value or identify improvement areas

Questions you should be researching:

• How do teams actually discover components in your library?

• What stops developers from using your design tokens?

• Where does documentation fall short?

• What patterns keep appearing across multiple product teams?

I actually wrote thedesignsystem.guide/d…