Ted: It's a daily battle! An email design system does not guarantee that a poor quality email will never be sent. Evangelism and teaching help, but you can't be everywhere at once and you don't want to be a blocker. I try to maximize my impact by focusing on large sends, recurring emails, and emails sent at a pivotal point in a customer's experience. Crystal: What Ted said! Especially if the design system is brand new, this is going to take time. It's time to create it, to establish it, to integrate everyone, etc. With time and continued support, the quality will improve. Depending on the tools you have, you may be able to take advantage of these tools to add fine-grained control to also keep the quality intact. How does something like interactivity in email come into play for design systems?
Ted: I experimented with interactive email in December. The crawl worked, but it didn't fix the ongoing UX issue, so it was shelved. However, if we had proceeded, I would have treated the interactive component like any other component: once used three or more times, it would have to be codified and documented in the design system. Until then, the component Image Masking Service is treated as an ad-hoc design. Crystal: We haven't been able to explore interactivity in messaging and design systems yet, but our approach would be the same as Ted's and it's already similar to adding any component, interactive or not. Initially, it would be considered an ad hoc item and saved in our back pocket should we need it again. If we start using this interactive component more than a handful of times and it is found to have an impact, it will be added to the system with usage guidelines.
We've tried to implement a design system, but it's difficult to get our branding team to use one properly. We then have to create new email designs each time. How do you fight this? Jaina: What challenges does the branding team face that prevent them from using the design system? Ask for their feedback and understand how you can help solve this problem. If the branding team feels like they're being heard, that can help you get their buy-in with the design system. Crystal : This type of difficulty usually stems from a misunderstanding of the system or a need of the team that we were unaware of. Get to know the team's needs, goals, and areas of friction, whether or not these apply directly to the system. Connect these findings to the system and you may be better able to diagnose what is missing in the system itself that is preventing the team from using the system properly,