The cost of running a design system

What is the running cost of your design system?

I talk a lot about the value of design systems because it took me far too long to really understand how businesses make decisions. Money.

When you’re thinking about how ‘cool’' it would be to have the latest design tool, or go to the latest conference in Copenhagen, or even planning to recruit more staff for your team, remember; this all contributes to the run cost of your design system.

So the money that your organisation is making from building and maintaining a design system sure as hell better be more than the cost.

It is a profitable venture, right? RIGHT?

The fundamentals of business accounting means managing costs versus profits. Ultimately you hope that all of your costs are multiplying your potential profits. So the costs included in running a design system should be a profit multiplier, right? The costs can be broken up into two simple groups, people and tools. Time and materials if you prefer. You pay people for their time to use the tools you also pay for. But there is a few more I’ll add at the end.

Teaming

People are by far your greatest cost. You can’t do this without people (yet). So who are they, and what do they cost?

THE FOLLOWING ASSUMES A FAIRLY LOW MATURITY, RAMPING UP DESIGN SYSTEM OPERATION

Designers. At least one.

Designers are powerful profit multipliers. Good designers can dream up experiences and delight your users. Great designers can tap into user insights to build powerful solutions, and systemise those solutions into a design libraries to help scale flexible, consistent experiences. All of this comes at the inescapable cost of time on the dime.

Cost: $90,000 per annum

UI / Front-end developer

A kind of specialist engineer who focuses on turning designs into performant code. Same rules apply here. You can pay a front-end developer to build your product and be done. Or you can invest further in a UI engineer to develop and implement a UI framework that enables scale.

Cost: $110,000 per annum

UX Writer

UX writers are hugely undervalued profit multipliers. Not just there to to write plucky copy and decide between Login and Log on. Good UX writers are writing the documentation that comes with a lot of enterprise level software. They’re writing the copy for customer impacting events that stop thousands of customers leaving at once. They know their users, their industry and their brand.

Cost: $80,000

Product Manager / Business Analyst

Not essential but recommended. Someone who can identify and drive projects for the design system team. Report up and out, while handling the admin.

Cost: $70,000

Tools

Tooling is harder to cost and I don’t intend on shopping around for costs. But there are a few essentials I believe that make the list - none of them cheap!

Hardware

A laptop and monitor for each for the above people, including IT setup and maintenance.

Cost: $10,000

Software

Figma Pro, Visual Studio Pro, Github, project management tools

Cost $2000 pa

Training

Training can be split into two categories, on-boarding and growth. Deloitte UK LLP estimated that it cost roughly $10,000 to onboard any member of staff. Meanwhile leveling up your skills and learning your craft has become increasingly free. So let’s keep this conservative and say $10k all in.

Cost $10,000

Utilities

The hidden cost we, the worker bee’s don’t always consider. The price just to keep the lights on, the AC blowing, the milk in the fridge, the cleaners cleaning up after you. Not to mention cloud backups, anti-virus software, VPN, building security. It stacks up.

Cost $5,000

TOTAL YEARLY RUN COST: $375,000

In conclusion.

I know this has been fairly pie-in-the-sky but if it’s costing your business somewhere in the ballpark of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars to run a design system it really should be landing with you at this point that your design system NEEDS to be doing some serious business.

Why not do some back of a napkin maths as well to see what your design system is costing your company? If you prefer to motivate your team with carrots over sticks, I’d recommend not sharing the outcome, but someone needs to know. Chances are, someone in finance does know. Wouldn’t it be good if you did too?

Let me know what you came up with at @theresmike on X.

In another blog article coming soon I’ll talk about how that $375,000 is great value for money.