How ITVX Turned Complexity into Cross-Functional Alignment

Design systems are often imagined as clean libraries, neat components and perfectly governed tokens. But inside large organisations, the real work is rarely that tidy. In her talk at UXDX EMEA 2026, Marianne Ashton-Booth, Head of Product Design and Design Systems at ITV, showed how ITVX learned to treat its design system not as a design library, but as an organisational operating system that helps fragmented teams move with shared purpose.

The design system is not the hard part

When people talk about design systems, they often talk about the visible layer: components, tokens, documentation, libraries, naming conventions and contribution models. These things matter, but they are rarely where the deepest problems live.

As Marianne Ashton-Booth explained in her talk, the real complexity appears when organisations scale. Teams fragment. Priorities compete. Resourcing changes. Work streams evolve. Platforms multiply. People start solving similar problems in different places, and slowly the promise of one shared system begins to fracture.

At ITVX, this was not a theoretical issue. ITV is one of the UK’s best-known broadcasters, making television since 1955. In 2015, it launched ITV Hub, its first attempt at a streaming platform. But as audience expectations shifted and the streaming market became more competitive, ITV rebuilt its digital proposition and launched ITVX in 2022. The new platform came with a new brand, a new proposition and new ambitions.

ITVX is not a small product. It operates across multiple work streams, multiple platforms and thousands of device types. It competes not only with BBC iPlayer in the UK, but with global streaming giants such as Netflix and Disney+. Behind the scenes, it depends on centralised and distributed engineering teams working across complex product surfaces. And yet, the core design system team supporting all of this is small.

That imbalance forced the team to confront a difficult reality: many of the problems they were facing were not really design system problems. They were organisational problems.

When silos are the default

Silos are often treated as signs of failure, but Ashton-Booth offered a more generous and useful framing. In large organisations, silos are often a natural byproduct of scale. Different teams have different incentives, timelines, success metrics and pressures. As organisations grow, misalignment becomes the default state unless alignment is practised intentionally.

This was central to ITVX’s design system journey. The team had to move the business away from thinking of the design system as a design library or “a design thing”, and towards seeing it as an organisational operating system. The system was not just there to supply components. It was there to help teams collaborate, communicate and make better decisions.

That distinction matters because even the best components become irrelevant if teams cannot work together effectively. If priorities are unclear, communication breaks down or trust erodes, the design system loses influence no matter how good the UI library is.

Most design systems pass through similar phases. At first, there is excitement. The value is visible, adoption is relatively easy and teams are enthusiastic. Then comes optimisation, expansion and eventually maintenance. The hardest friction often appears between expansion and maintenance. Teams start creating workarounds. Governance begins to feel restrictive. Adoption becomes inconsistent. Priorities become political.

At that point, the work shifts. You are no longer only solving a design problem. You are solving an organisational one.

The resourcing trap

This challenge is made harder by the wider industry climate. Ashton-Booth referenced Zeroheight’s State of Design Systems reports, where lack of resourcing and staffing has remained one of the biggest challenges for design system teams.

That makes sense. Design systems often create long-term value, but that value can be difficult to connect directly to immediate commercial outcomes. Under pressure, organisations tend to prioritise visible delivery, short-term revenue goals and efficiency. The very systems designed to create long-term consistency are often among the first to be deprioritised.

This is the irony of design system work. When budgets tighten, the work that reduces duplication, improves consistency and supports delivery at scale can be framed as optional. That is why organisational buy-in matters. Design system teams need to communicate not only what they are building, but why it matters to the business.

At ITVX, the team had to become more intentional about proving value, building relationships and showing how the system supported the organisation’s changing priorities.

A design system cannot survive in isolation

One of the most distinctive parts of Ashton-Booth’s talk was her use of Stafford Beer’s viable system model. Beer, a major figure in cybernetics, studied how organisations survive in complex environments. His work argues that any viable organisation needs to adapt to its environment while maintaining enough identity and autonomy to function.

This became a useful lens for thinking about design systems. A design system may have its own team, governance, roadmap and outputs, but it cannot survive in a vacuum. It has to stay connected to the business, the product teams, the technology, the users and the pressures around it.

When a design system becomes disconnected from the organisation it serves, it slowly stops feeling useful. Once that happens, alignment begins to break down.

Beer’s model breaks a viable system into five interlinked systems: core operations, coordination, control and governance, future-facing adaptation, and identity or purpose. Ashton-Booth mapped these directly onto design systems.

System one is the visible foundation: components, tokens, guidelines and the outputs teams use. System two is communication: documentation, office hours and the flow of information between teams. System three is governance: rules, contribution models and decision-making. System four is future thinking: roadmap, research and the ability to respond to where the business is going. System five is purpose: stakeholder relationships, executive buy-in and shared belief that the system matters.

This framing helps explain why design systems struggle. It is rarely just because the components are poor. The components are often fine. The real issues are usually below the surface: trust, communication, prioritisation, relationships and shared belief.

Treating the design system like a product

At ITVX, one shift that really helped was treating the design system more like a product. That meant looking beyond usage and adoption metrics, and instead gathering evidence about the overall health of the system. The team looked at three layers.

Awareness and perception.

Did people understand the value of the system? Did they trust it? Did it feel useful, or was it developing a negative reputation across teams?

Usability and discoverability.

Could teams find what they needed? Did the system support their day-to-day workflows? Where was friction appearing?

Adoption and contribution.

Who was using the system? Who was contributing back? And, just as importantly, who was not?

These questions changed the quality of conversations. Instead of relying on opinion or assumption, the team could bring evidence into discussions. Gaps in adoption or contribution often revealed organisational issues earlier than component issues.

That product mindset also helped the team move away from reactive fulfilment. Previously, the design system team had operated more like a service desk. A request would come in, a component would be built and the cycle would repeat. But with a small team and a large organisation, that model was not sustainable. It optimised for individual requests rather than long-term alignment.

Planning for now, next and future

Ashton-Booth introduced a planning model built around three layers: tactical, strategic and normative.

Tactical planning was about keeping work moving. Teams still needed support quickly, and the design system had to feel responsive rather than obstructive. One useful initiative was the introduction of expansion kit libraries: spaces where work streams could maintain experimental components and early discovery work.

This helped solve a common problem. Teams were often exploring or A/B testing similar ideas without knowing others were doing the same. Work was hidden in branches, isolated Figma files or local experiments. Expansion kits created visibility without forcing every early idea directly into the master library. They reduced duplication while preserving speed.

Strategic planning focused on direction and alignment. The design system team had to ask where the business was going and what mattered most. When revenue priorities shifted, the team adjusted its roadmap towards payment flows, forms and conversion patterns, because these areas were becoming strategically important to ITVX.

This was a crucial lesson. A design system cannot operate separately from organisational priorities. If it does not help the business move towards its goals, it becomes much harder to justify continued support.

Normative planning focused on belief, purpose and long-term direction. Adoption does not happen through governance alone. People do not use systems just because they are told to. They use them when they trust the value, understand the purpose and feel connected to the direction behind the work.

This layer is especially important as organisations explore AI-supported ways of working. At ITVX, the team began asking how AI might affect the design system itself: how processes should evolve, how faster experimentation could be supported and how quality and consistency could be protected as speed increases.

Communicating value to different audiences

Another major lesson was communication. Design systems often make the mistake of telling everyone the same story. But executives, product leaders, designers, engineers and delivery teams do not all care about the same things.

Executives care about impact. Product teams care about delivery and outcomes. Delivery teams care about usability, speed and whether the system helps or slows them down. If design system teams speak only about components and consistency, they risk missing what each audience actually needs to hear.

Ashton-Booth used Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle as a communication reference: start with why. If people understand only what the design system is, but not why it matters, long-term adoption becomes difficult.

The team learned to tailor the message. Teams close to delivery needed clarity on process and output. Leadership needed to understand impact, strategy and organisational value.

Her memorable analogy captured it well: you do not need to tell everyone how the sausage is made. Just give them the sausage. In other words, do not overload every audience with every detail. Give people the information that helps them make the right decision.

Alignment is not a milestone

Ashton-Booth ended with lessons that apply far beyond ITVX. Design systems can shape behaviour. They influence how teams collaborate, how decisions are made and how priorities align. But to do that, teams cannot focus only on the visible layer. The deeper organisational dynamics matter just as much.

Alignment is not a milestone. It is continuous maintenance. Organisations do not stand still. Teams change, priorities shift, leadership changes and commercial pressure moves. A design system has to keep reconnecting with that reality.

The systems that survive are not the most rigid. They are the ones that adapt. If a design system becomes more focused on protecting itself than supporting the organisation, it will create friction instead of reducing it.

That is the heart of ITVX’s journey from silos to systems. The goal was never to eliminate complexity. Complex organisations will always have complexity. The goal was to build a system and a process capable of adapting to it.

A good design system creates clarity without rigidity, consistency without limitation and alignment without forcing every team into the same shape.

At ITVX, the design system became more than a library. It became a way to help the organisation work together.

Want to watch the full talk?

You can find the full talk here:
https://uxdx.com/session/from-silos-to-systems-how-itvx-turned-complexity-into-cross-functional-alignment/

Or explore all the insights in the UXDX EMEA 2026 Post Show Report:
https://uxdx.com/post-show-report