The “Invisible Business Risks” of Service Diversification : Design Systems That Support Sustainable Corporate Growth as a Management Resource

Recent years have seen an explosion of digital services at many companies. With the emergence of cloud computing technology and generative AI, the speed with which companies can launch new services has risen dramatically. Development work that previously took months can now often take shape in as little as weeks. These conditions present tremendous opportunities for companies, but also give rise to new risks for users.
The more services arise, the greater the fragmentation in user experience becomes. The positioning of buttons differs per app, despite coming from the same company. Terminology becomes inconsistent and workflows are all over the place. Users end up having to relearn how to use a company’s services each time, increasing learning costs in terms of time, effort and resources.
What happens if things keep on like this? When users encounter a completely different user interface right after they thought they had gotten used to the old one, they experience confusion and stress. This leads to users giving up on using those services. It also creates a sense of distrust because the services are all different even though it’s the same company, which leads directly to lower trust in the brand itself.
In other words, service inconsistency is a problem that goes beyond just “differences in appearance.” Forcing users to bear excessive learning costs not only harms the user experience, it risks damaging the brand as an asset itself. The inconvenience experienced by customers ultimately rebounds to businesses in the form of customers leaving.

So, how do we overcome these dual issues? Designs systems serve precisely as a mechanism for solving both these “external issues” (fragmentation of the user experience) and “internal issues” (organizational and development inefficiency) at once.
While often misunderstood, design systems are neither catalogues of mere UI components nor guidelines on picking colors and fonts. The essence of a design system is to be the “experience platform” that allows users to get a consistent experience no matter what service they come into contact with. This goes beyond just making things look a consistent way to systematize everything including component usage rules, information design principles and unity of interactions.
The aim of all this is more than just efficiency. Rather, it lies in making the user feel that services are “fitting for that company,” and to increase the sense of comfort and trust that they feel. A consistent experience has the power to make users use services consistently without forcing them to incur learning costs. On the development side, meanwhile, it generates reusability and consistency, allowing developers to combine speed and quality.
In other words, design systems are both mechanisms for providing brand experiences that users trust and development platforms that let companies withstand the speed of the market. As a tool for bridging user and organizational challenges, design systems are growing in importance year on year.

The conclusions we gained from this experience are clear. Design systems are not just a matter for design departments. They are management resources that are resilient to change.
Market conditions are constantly changing and new technologies and services are constantly emerging. Starting on redesigns from scratch each time the market changes will mean losing in the competition for speed. If companies have a common platform, however, they can maintain consistency of experience even as they add new services and thus combine development efficiency with quality.
Implementing this takes “cross-project initiatives” and “prioritizing the user-perspective.” Optimizing on the level of individual projects will only further drive fragmentation. Achieving a consensus around how to define the brand experience through cross-organizational discussions and incorporating this into design systems is essential.
Design systems also contribute to the human resource development and skill succession. Mechanisms that let new team members and external partners catch up quickly play an important role for companies in an era of labor shortages as intellectual asset that they can build up.
This is because it allows users to keep using services with peace of mind and get the same experience no matter which service they come into contact with from among the increasingly complex suite of services on offer.
Design systems are mechanisms for supporting those consistent experiences and building up trust in brands, and are thus management resources that contribute to the future of a company.
Through our own application of this approach in house at ABeam Consulting, we have first-hand knowledge of how this approach can be a platform that goes beyond improving development efficiency and quality, supporting companywide trust and sustainable growth.
Based on these insights, we support clients in building mechanisms that support both more efficient development and brand value, while maintaining consistency of user experience amid an increasingly complex range of services and organizations.
These mechanisms are more than just ways of streamlining design and development. Instead, they represent efforts to redesign “overall experience value,” including business strategy, organizational operations and human resource development.
Going beyond design systems to reconstruct the “nature of management as a platform for experience consistency” is precisely what ABeam aspires to in pursuing co-creation.
ABeam Consulting leverages insights gained through first-hand, practical experience to construct shared platforms centered on design systems and build a socially sustainable future together with our clients.