ASML — Scaling a Design System

Context

81+

customer-facing applications served by one design system

38 / 81

applications built with the design system — 25+ development teams

3.5 / 5

baseline usability and satisfaction rating from designers and developers

ASML's BL Apps department builds the customer-facing applications that support chip manufacturers worldwide. One CX design system is meant to keep them consistent — but contribution ran through a centralized, gatekeeper-style review process, and adoption stalled. My assignment: improve the effectiveness and usability of the design system for its UX designers and developers.

Challenge

How might we grow adoption of the design system without slowing product teams down?

Research

The approach — Double Diamond: 11 weeks of discovery and definition across 8 research questions, 6 weeks of ideation, prototyping, and evaluation.

2 focus groups

with UX designers and front-end developers

21 responses

survey of 12 UX designers and 9 developers

15 interviews

10 designers and 5 developers, across 8 product teams

Survey — main challenges using the CX design system: inconsistent design patterns for developers (50%); limited flexibility for customization for designers (33%).

The software developer journey — the experience dips exactly where contribution should happen.

Key insights

Adoption grows when teams can contribute — so the intervention targets the service, not the library.

92%

of surveyed designers consume the design system — 67% frequently

75%

already contribute occasionally or frequently

83%

rate its effect on their productivity as good or very effective

Insight The UX spec review process was too slow for product pace — so teams built their own variants

→

Decision Redesign the contribution service, not the component library

→

Validation Concept resonated with designers and developers in iterative testing

Insight Prioritization felt opaque — teams stopped submitting requests

→

Decision Make status, voting, and priority visible to everyone

→

Validation Users said the prototype "gave a feeling of transparency" in the contribution process

The contribution ecosystem

The existing UX review request process — light and heavy contribution paths through multiple roles and review boards.

Current contribution process

Topic → Gap analysis → Who to contact → Review & result → Done

↓

Pain points

Too slow for product pace Opaque prioritization Text-heavy documentation Inflexible components Teams build their own variants

↓

New contribution ecosystem

Share an idea → Community voting → Transparent prioritization → Jira integration

Design principles

Contributing as easy as consuming

Trust follows visibility

Transparent status and prioritization.

Meet teams in their tools

Jira, existing community infrastructure.

Measure continuously

Metrics & KPIs, not anecdotes.

Exploration

Four iterations — two interactive wireframes, two interactive prototypes — each tested with a UX designer and a developer. Concepts were validated first with three active design-system users; gamification was explored and dropped as a poor fit for ASML's culture.

Wireframe iterations — voting, idea sharing, filtering, and profile flows before high fidelity.

Solution

A Design System Community platform: idea sharing, voting, transparent prioritization, and Jira integration — turning the design system from a deliverable into a participatory service.

"I think it's really promising. I would love to have this for us — it helps us keep track of everything we still need to contribute on." — UX designer, user test

An idea card in the final prototype — voting with simple options, comments, and a Jira ticket created directly from a common need.

Validation

4 test rounds

every iteration tested with design-system users

Pilot first

recommendation to pilot with ASML's existing community tools before investing in a build

KPIs defined

user satisfaction 4/5 by end of 2025 (baseline 3.25–3.5) · 80% of designers active in the community

"Currently we don't know exactly what is going on in the CX design system — this platform helps us have a sense of being in control." — Software developer, user test

Reflection

Inside a large engineering organization, the highest-leverage design work is often invisible: redesigning a process, and landing it with a path the organization can actually take.