50% Efficiency Gains with Silk Design System

Silk is Netguru’s design system that accelerates UI design for mobile, offering ready-to-use components, customization tools, and detailed documentation.

Here's a story of improved delivery times and consistent results both for clients and internal projects.

About the project

Silk is Netguru’s design system built to deliver faster and more efficient UI design across mobile platforms. It provides a flexible toolkit to streamline workflows, ensure consistency, and improve delivery times for clients.

Silk simplifies designers’ work with a nearly headless UI kit. It supports rapid prototyping, wireframing, and style guides while serving as a ready-to-use design system for commercial projects. This ensures flexibility and efficiency for diverse needs.

Our client's key challenges

Inconsistent visuals and interactions (design legacy)
Difficulties in scaling current design solutions
Lack of documentation, leading to inefficiencies in the design-to-development process
Different levels of design literacy in the team, slowing down collaboration
Lack of a common language between design and development, resulting in misaligned priorities

Project scope

The Silk Design System is an extensive project with a wide range of features and resources aimed at streamlining UI design. Its key components include:

Core features
- Comprehensive components: A library of pre-built, fully customizable components that support rapid prototyping and the creation of scalable design systems, ensuring consistency throughout projects.
- Design tokens: Pre-defined structure for colors, typography, spacing, and shapes to streamline branding and ensure design uniformity.
Versatile usage
- Out-of-the-box functionality: Ideal for rapid prototyping, allowing quick deployment without additional customization.
- Customizable design system: Can be tailored to align with specific branding requirements, making it suitable for commercial or long-term projects.
Extensive documentation
- Clear naming conventions: Standards for files and components that streamline collaboration and improve workflow efficiency.
- Maintenance and expansion guidelines: Detailed instructions for expanding the library and ensuring system consistency over time.
- UX writing tips: Practical advice for crafting user-friendly content and maintaining a consistent tone.
Implementation tools
- Step-by-step guides: Detailed instructions for deploying Silk in various environments, such as internal teams or external clients.

Silk Design System Screen 2

Real-life implementations

Client implementation 1

In 2024, Silk was used to develop an MVP for a native mobile app, enabling faster delivery and consistency. A similar 2021 project for a web app, done without Silk, faced longer timelines and inefficiencies.

Impact of Silk Design System

Aspect	With Silk (2024)	Without Silk (2021)
Timeline	3 months	6 months
Team	1 designer on DS, 1 designer on MVP UX	2 designers solely on DS
Customization	Slight style changes, added 6 new components (27→33), rebuilt chat component	Fully custom-built components
Platform	Native mobile app (iOS, Android)	Web app and mobile (iOS, Android)
Documentation	Robust, customized during implementation	Standards were established but time constraints affected consistency
Implementation (development)	Agile: Components were globally restyled using tokens, enabling faster builds and simultaneous MVP app increments	Waterfall: Required extensive style refinements and ongoing consultations with branding/marketing; implemented only after full design completion.

Silk Design System screen 3

Client implementation 2

A mobile app designed to simplify flight and hotel bookings. Tailored for a specific market, the app enables users to search for flights, book tickets, and manage hotel reservations effortlessly.

Impact of Silk Design System

Initial design: Silk played a critical role in meeting the tight deadline of 3–4 weeks to design the app. By leveraging its ready-to-use components, the design system saved an estimated 3–6 days while ensuring consistency across the app. Custom components were also used to better match the app's design language.
Rebranding: When the client rebranded, Silk helped the team quickly adapt the app's design. The core redesigns were completed in 2 days (focused on delivering updates for the development team), and the full rebranding process—including alignment checks and final tweaks—was finished in approximately 3 working days. Without Silk, the rebranding is estimated to have taken an additional 4 days, demonstrating its value in speeding up updates and maintaining design consistency.

Impact

Efficiency gains: Projects utilizing Silk saw significant reductions in setup time, with rapid prototyping completed 50% faster than before.
Customization adoption: Over 80% of users reported successfully adapting Silk’s components to match branding needs without compromising design integrity.
Enhanced collaboration: Teams noted improved consistency and communication, attributed to Silk’s unified documentation and structured component library.