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Optimizing the Design Handoff Process through Design System Adoption in Agile Environments
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School of Science |
Master's thesis
Electronic archive copy is available via Aalto Thesis Database.
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en
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53
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Abstract
Design systems have been widely recognized as an efficient collaborative tool that helps design and development teams work together more effectively. However, adopting a design system requires significant time and effort from organizations. The process demands alignment across teams, structured communication, and ongoing maintenance. However, challenges in communication could lead to poor collaboration between design and development and create obstacles in the joint effort of design system adoption. This thesis explores the challenges and solutions related to adopting a design system within an Agile environment, focusing on improving communication and workflow between design and development teams. The study begins by reviewing relevant literature and describing the research context. The qualitative approach was adopted in this research, including interviews, observations, and workshops. Key issues were identified and grouped into three main themes: communication issues caused by unclear roles, inefficient hand-off processes, and lack of mutual understanding between departments of design and development. These are further explored in sub-themes to deepen the understanding of the core challenges and offer a structured view of communication gaps and workflow inefficiencies. The result suggests that addressing these challenges requires building a solid design system foundation, which includes defining a shared vision, establishing clear roles, evaluating UX maturity, and integrating system development into daily work routines. The findings summarized the design hand-off process and provided a holistic view of how the design system can benefit the design process and improve cross-team communication, by offer- ing shared guidelines and documentation, ensuring consistency and reducing miscommunication. And highlighted the importance of clarifying roles through defined processes and integrating design system building into daily work in building successful future design systems, especially in fast-moving Agile teams.
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Supervisor
Nieminen, Mika P.Thesis advisor
Fernaeus, YlvaLindegren, Andreas