Designsations

Designsations is a term used in design discourse to describe the practice of assigning formal names and classification labels to design components, patterns, states, and roles within a design system or product development process. The concept treats design elements as objects of governance, with designated semantics that support communication, reuse, and accessibility across teams.

Designsations encompass both the naming of visual components (for example, a primary button) and the tagging of non-visual attributes such as behavior, accessibility requirements, or ownership. Proponents argue that consistent designations reduce ambiguity, speed up handoffs between designers and developers, and facilitate automation, analytics, and internationalization. Critics warn that over-structuring naming schemes can create maintenance overhead and hinder creativity if not aligned with real workflows.

Origins of the term are informal; it has appeared mainly in theoretical discussions and practitioner guides about design systems and information architecture. In practice, designsations are typically organized into a taxonomy or ontology, with levels such as element type, variant, state, and domain. Governance bodies, naming conventions, and documentation are recommended to sustain coherence, including versioning and change management to track updates. They are related to, but distinct from, broader concepts such as design language, taxonomy, metadata, and design system governance. Designers may use them to improve cross-team communication and to enable tooling that relies on stable artifact identifiers.

See also: design system, taxonomy, metadata, naming conventions, design governance.