Design system: a shared language to design faster
Your screens are drifting, your teams keep rebuilding the same components?
Akiani is an agency specialised in ergonomics and design. Our job is to understand users, then turn that knowledge into mockups and prototypes, at the scale of the component as much as the screen. When your products grow, we bring these components, their rules and their documentation together into a shared reference for your designers and developers.
When screens drift apart
The bigger your products get, the more inconsistencies pile up.
The takeaway
The guidelines describe all the design constraints to meet, in particular for graphic components, interaction and information architecture. They are an expert translation of the user knowledge gathered into a list of specifications. Without that shared base, the handover to developers loses quality and everyone redraws in their own corner.
How we go about it
Start from your components and your guidelines
We start from your existing interfaces and components. The ergonomic guidelines describe all the design constraints, from graphic components to information architecture. They are the expert translation of user knowledge into a list of specifications.
Mock up from component to screen
We mock up at the scale of the component as much as the screen, incrementally. Tools like Figma make this easy, and each mockup is delivered with all the ergonomic and functional characteristics it involves.
Get the handover to developers right
The handover to developers is an important point of vigilance, to make sure the quality produced during mockup is maintained through to integration. We give them access to everything they need, from specs to exports.
We've done it on real products
We build and document this base in our redesign projects, where several interfaces need to share the same foundation. On the bordeaux.fr redesign, we developed a thorough modular approach: a system of reusable components (highlighting quotes, anchor-based navigation, internal linking between content, blocks designed to offer services to users) that editorial teams reuse to create new pages. The redesigned site reaches 95% RGAA compliance and an RGESN score of 86%.
See our design system case studiesFrequently asked questions
To design products that are more useful, more usable and more desirable, without recreating the same components on every project. The base keeps your screens coherent as the product grows and smooths the handover between design and development.
We start from your existing interfaces and components. We describe the design constraints, from graphic components to information architecture, then mock up at the scale of the component as much as the screen. We get the handover to developers right, so the quality is maintained through to integration.
The detailed definitions are in our glossary. In practice, what matters is that your designers and developers share one reference of components, rules and documentation.
When several teams draw interfaces that drift apart and recreate the same components without a common reference. For a small scope, a library and a few shared rules are often enough.
Through a clear structure: a framework that protects the collaboration, regular check-ins and an incremental record that keeps the history of decisions traceable. Without that framework, the base goes stale and everyone starts redrawing in their own corner again.