Design Obserability - What is it? (Part II)
Rachel New
16 May 2025
Why Design observability is more important than ever
Design maturity, tooling, and workflows have evolved - but without visibility into real-world implementation, teams still guess. Mature products demand robust design telemetry.
This isn’t merely a design issue - it impacts product delivery speed, engineering productivity, customer trust, and your bottom line. Now, we have the technology to clearly see and measure what's been invisible until now.
Who here is using AI as part of their workflow? (Hypothesis: you all put up your hands). Consider this, if you ask Jenny to as an AI to create a page using your products styling, and then you asked Jonny to do the same, AI would build two different pages.
AI is creative, it doesn’t follow rules because nobody is telling it to. We need to harness quality over quantity while we still can, and that is why design observability is so more important now than ever.
The Next Logical Step in Design Ops
Your design system's effectiveness depends entirely on how closely it aligns with your live product. Design Observability bridges that crucial gap.
Just as automated testing revolutionized software engineering, Design Observability is becoming essential for design and product operations. Without observability, you're merely reacting; with it, you're proactively optimizing.
How to Get Started
No need for a complete system overhaul. Start by answering:
Do we know exactly which components are live?
Can we quantify UI inconsistencies?
How recently have untouched areas of the app undergone design review?
What is our current accessibility status?
If these answers aren't clear, your next step is Design Observability.
Final Thought: Visibility Builds Trust
Design systems scale trust - between teams, across releases, and with users. Trust requires feedback, and Design Observability is exactly that feedback, empowering your team to confidently deliver great design at scale.
Sources: Sparkbox (2022), Zeroheight (2023), Figma Config (2023), McKinset Design Index (2018), IBM/Salesforce - Designbetter.co, Invision (2019), Deque (2022)
Why Design observability is more important than ever
Design maturity, tooling, and workflows have evolved - but without visibility into real-world implementation, teams still guess. Mature products demand robust design telemetry.
This isn’t merely a design issue - it impacts product delivery speed, engineering productivity, customer trust, and your bottom line. Now, we have the technology to clearly see and measure what's been invisible until now.
Who here is using AI as part of their workflow? (Hypothesis: you all put up your hands). Consider this, if you ask Jenny to as an AI to create a page using your products styling, and then you asked Jonny to do the same, AI would build two different pages.
AI is creative, it doesn’t follow rules because nobody is telling it to. We need to harness quality over quantity while we still can, and that is why design observability is so more important now than ever.
The Next Logical Step in Design Ops
Your design system's effectiveness depends entirely on how closely it aligns with your live product. Design Observability bridges that crucial gap.
Just as automated testing revolutionized software engineering, Design Observability is becoming essential for design and product operations. Without observability, you're merely reacting; with it, you're proactively optimizing.
How to Get Started
No need for a complete system overhaul. Start by answering:
Do we know exactly which components are live?
Can we quantify UI inconsistencies?
How recently have untouched areas of the app undergone design review?
What is our current accessibility status?
If these answers aren't clear, your next step is Design Observability.
Final Thought: Visibility Builds Trust
Design systems scale trust - between teams, across releases, and with users. Trust requires feedback, and Design Observability is exactly that feedback, empowering your team to confidently deliver great design at scale.
Sources: Sparkbox (2022), Zeroheight (2023), Figma Config (2023), McKinset Design Index (2018), IBM/Salesforce - Designbetter.co, Invision (2019), Deque (2022)
Why Design observability is more important than ever
Design maturity, tooling, and workflows have evolved - but without visibility into real-world implementation, teams still guess. Mature products demand robust design telemetry.
This isn’t merely a design issue - it impacts product delivery speed, engineering productivity, customer trust, and your bottom line. Now, we have the technology to clearly see and measure what's been invisible until now.
Who here is using AI as part of their workflow? (Hypothesis: you all put up your hands). Consider this, if you ask Jenny to as an AI to create a page using your products styling, and then you asked Jonny to do the same, AI would build two different pages.
AI is creative, it doesn’t follow rules because nobody is telling it to. We need to harness quality over quantity while we still can, and that is why design observability is so more important now than ever.
The Next Logical Step in Design Ops
Your design system's effectiveness depends entirely on how closely it aligns with your live product. Design Observability bridges that crucial gap.
Just as automated testing revolutionized software engineering, Design Observability is becoming essential for design and product operations. Without observability, you're merely reacting; with it, you're proactively optimizing.
How to Get Started
No need for a complete system overhaul. Start by answering:
Do we know exactly which components are live?
Can we quantify UI inconsistencies?
How recently have untouched areas of the app undergone design review?
What is our current accessibility status?
If these answers aren't clear, your next step is Design Observability.
Final Thought: Visibility Builds Trust
Design systems scale trust - between teams, across releases, and with users. Trust requires feedback, and Design Observability is exactly that feedback, empowering your team to confidently deliver great design at scale.
Sources: Sparkbox (2022), Zeroheight (2023), Figma Config (2023), McKinset Design Index (2018), IBM/Salesforce - Designbetter.co, Invision (2019), Deque (2022)