How to understand whether your Design System is delivering for you

Design Systems in pharma support far more than visual consistency. They have a direct influence on compliance, quality of experience, speed of delivery, and the ability to scale content globally.

Healthy Design Systems usually show the same patterns:

• Teams launch new sites and features faster, with less rework.
• Approvals are smoother because components meet regulatory expectations.
• Experiences look and feel consistent across markets, even where local autonomy is high.
• Designers, developers, and agencies all refer to the same source of truth.

If this doesn’t sound like your reality, you’re not alone. Many systems lose alignment over time or struggle to keep up with changing brand and user needs.

A Design System only makes sense when viewed in context. One of the most effective ways to understand its performance is to review your system alongside the live experiences it supports, and evaluate how well the underlying rules, components, and documentation hold up.

A focused design system audit can highlight:

• Where foundational elements — such as colours, typography, spacing, or icons — have drifted or been interpreted inconsistently
• Whether core components are being used as intended, or where teams have created workarounds or custom variants
• Gaps in the style guide or documentation that make the system harder for designers, developers, or content teams to use
• Friction points where components aren’t intuitive or scalable across channels
• Differences in quality, accessibility, and experience across brands, markets, and platforms
• Areas of duplication or technical debt that increase delivery time or cost
• How well the system is structured for future growth, new channels, and omnichannel needs

The outcome is a clear, evidence-based view of what’s not working and why. It gives you a baseline for tracking progress and a prioritised, actionable plan to bring your design system back into alignment — improving consistency, usability, and effectiveness across your digital estate.

Design System performance isn’t just about how well components are built. It’s about how well they support the people who rely on them. The best way to understand that is by seeking first-hand insight from your users — both internal and external. 

Two groups are especially important.

Healthcare professionals (HCPs) and patients

A system may look consistent, but that doesn’t guarantee a smooth journey. Short rounds of usability research with your end users — whether HCPs or patients — can show whether common patterns support the right behaviour. For example:

• Can HCPs reach the content they need with fewer steps?
• Do standardised forms and data-capture flows build confidence or introduce friction?
• Are components accessible and usable across regions and languages?

Even small studies uncover whether the system is genuinely supporting real-world use.

Internal teams

Brand teams, regional marketers, and delivery partners are close to the day-to-day pain points. Speaking with them helps you understand:

• Which components genuinely speed up delivery
• Which parts of the system are unclear, outdated, or rarely used
• Where teams are building outside the system and why
• How confident they feel using the system independently

This insight gives you a grounded understanding of adoption, maturity, and sentiment.

To measure ROI, we recommend starting with a small, focused set of metrics. These are the ones pharma teams often find most useful.

Speed and cost

• Average time to launch a website, page, campaign or asset 
• Delivery cost compared with bespoke builds
• Time saved during regulatory approval cycles

Adoption and usage

• Component usage across brands, markets, and platforms
• Volume of duplicated or custom components
• Percentage of sites fully built using the system

Quality and consistency

• Accessibility scores across markets
• Variation in page templates or interaction patterns
• Reduction in UX or UI defects and rework

Experience impact

• Task completion time for key HCP journeys
• Interaction with priority components or pathways
• Satisfaction or confidence levels gathered through rapid research

The aim isn’t to track everything. Three to six well-chosen metrics can show whether the system is moving your digital experience in the right direction.

Measuring ROI isn’t about defending the design system. Most teams already know it has value. What matters is using evidence to decide where to focus next.

This only works if measurement isn’t a one-off exercise. Like any external user experience, a design system needs to be reviewed regularly to stay relevant as channels, teams, and expectations change.

Repeating audits and tracking the same core metrics over time helps you spot patterns, understand whether changes are working, and avoid slow drift. Layering this with lightweight feedback from internal users — through surveys or regular check-ins with designers, developers, and brand teams — helps surface friction and opportunities that aren’t always visible in top-level data.

Taken together, a structured and repeatable measurement framework helps you identify:

• Components that need refinement or consolidation
• Documentation gaps that continue to create confusion
• New patterns required as user needs and channels evolve
• Governance improvements to better support global and local teams
• Opportunities to extend the design system into new products or channels

The result is a living roadmap shaped by real evidence, not assumptions — and a design system that continues to improve rather than standing still.

A Design System earns its value over time. When you audit it regularly, listen to the people using it, and measure what matters, it becomes a practical tool for improving experience, speed, and consistency — not just a set of rules teams try to follow.