Benefits & Challenges

Adopting a system can trigger significant benefits to an organization that wants to communicate more efficiently with a synthesized voice. But it also comes with challenges too. In our practice, we’ve found that the we define those benefits and challenges as:

Benefits

• Unified, consistent approach for creating and annotating UX deliverables
• Efficient, repeatable production based on an established conventions
• Modular reuse across designs and projects
• Common visual vocabulary for communicating user experience requirements
• Portable across resources to evolve and share work
• Scalable templates and components that can evolve and grow over time
• Increased collaboration across disciplines to formalize a design system
• Credible deliverables that raise expectations of and respect for designers

Challenges

Adopting a documentation system that combines deliverable templates with a vaster collection of wireframing components poses challenges for leaders of a user experience team. Although the benefits clearly outweigh the drawbacks, it is critical to be mindful of and address challenges that include:

Management (The “Boss” & “Team” Challenges)

• Perceptions of systems constraining innovation
• Improper planning of pilot projects or adoption such as a trial-by-fire that frustrates user base that wasn’t ready for it (although some have proven that they are)
• Insufficient focus from management / points-of-contact who are frequently distracted with ongoing design projects
• Insufficient hardware and/or delayed software installation during adoption

Adoption (The Teacher’s & Champion’s Challenges)

• Learning new software tool(s)
• Educating design staff of the benefits of a systematic approach
• Adapting to new documentation practices
• Learning and correctly applying component, page, and element libraries (for wireframes, not necessarily deliverables)

Administration (The Librarian’s Challenges)

• Long-term investments to create reusable assets versus demands for short-term project deliverables (although EightShapes is now maintaining and giving away deliverable document templates for free)
• Maintenance of wireframe component libraries
• Asset management, both by project and across tracks (designers need a place to co-locate files and collaborate)

Note that the Teacher, Champion, and Librarian can often be the same person.