Achieving Balanced Design Consistency
Summary
What do you do when Mergers and Acquisitions is your company’s growth strategy and all the products look different. Key design principle to solve this is UX Consistency. But how much consistency is needed? How can you engage all these different teams and align them on a common goal, especially in a decentralized product design environment? Lastly, having design alignment or a common design system is not enough, but ensuring that all the products implement the agreed design consistency across product. Learn how you can influence and scale to achieve balanced user experience across all products.
Key Insights
-
•
Balancing around 30-40% design consistency with 60-70% product-specific freedom prevents cookie-cutter products and fosters innovation.
-
•
Large companies with many acquisitions, like SAP with 72 and Palo Alto Networks with 16, face major design consistency challenges across diverse products.
-
•
Creating network groups with one designer from each product team promotes collaboration and democratic design decisions.
-
•
Visual elements like color palettes are an effective starting point for incremental consistency improvements.
-
•
Sharing consolidated screenshots of disparate products visually convinces leadership of the need for cohesion.
-
•
A service leadership model that fosters collaboration works better than authoritative command and control in achieving design alignment.
-
•
Addressing organizational, cultural, and strategic differences early prevents roadblocks during design consistency efforts.
-
•
Involving product management, engineering, and leadership ensures implementation commitments translate design decisions into production.
-
•
Measuring ROI in design is difficult but can focus on cost savings from reusing components and decreasing duplicate work.
-
•
Onboarding newly acquired companies early into the alignment process facilitates smoother design integration.
Notable Quotes
"Consistency is a key principle in design and in life; to achieve something you have to be consistent and disciplined."
"When things behave the same way, users don’t have to worry about what will happen—that’s the intuitive factor."
"Instead of aiming for 80% consistency, I believe 30-40% consistency with 60-70% freedom works better."
"Put all product screenshots together to clearly show that different products look different and must feel like one company."
"Changing the mindset takes time; like a big ship it takes hours to turn direction."
"Work with majority wins but don’t alienate minority teams; everyone has to sometimes compromise for the greater good."
"A service leadership approach means you’re here to help and orchestrate, not to command and control."
"Tracking implementation commitments after each design network group keeps momentum and accountability."
"Design talent is the most valuable asset; empowering them to be part of decisions retains and motivates them."
"Achieving coherency across products leads to less training, fewer support calls, and more users successfully adopting products."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"No one is born knowing how to facilitate; it takes training, observation, and practice."
Alexandra SchmidtEnterprise UX Playbook
December 1, 2022
"Our offices have stand-up desks, nice collaboration areas, and comfy seating with a fresh, on-brand look."
Jen Crim Jess Quittner Saritha Kattekola Alex Karr Gurbani PahwaCulture, DIBS & Recruiting
June 11, 2021
"If you’re a product manager, you don’t do very much design work anymore; you care about it but step away from the Figma."
Christian CrumlishAMA with Christian Crumlish, author of Product Management for UX People
March 24, 2022
"If diversity is being asked to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance, and belonging is actually dancing with everyone else."
Libby MaurerTreating Diversity & Inclusion in Hiring as a Design Problem
December 5, 2019
"Technology is a tool, not a solution in itself; it needs human input."
Ali Jeffery Sheri ChudowHow DesignOps Helped Enable Wall Street to Work Remotely
October 22, 2020
"Jamie Foxx spent 14 hours with his eyes closed to inhabit Ray Charles’ world."
Daniel GloydDesigning From the Inside Out: How Method Acting Can Inspire Design Research
February 12, 2026
"When we tailor education to individual needs, everyone benefits."
Kristin SkinnerFive Years of DesignOps
September 29, 2021
"Confirmation bias is when we ignore or explain away data that doesn’t support what we already believe - Nina Belk."
Johanna KollmannInsights-Driven Product Strategy: Get your Research to Count
December 6, 2022
"You don’t design interfaces anymore—you choreograph intentions."
David SternbergUncovering the hidden forces shaping user behavior
July 17, 2025
