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Designing internal facing systems, that have been procured from external third parties, can be a lonely experience in an organisation and wider community that is so focussed on providing quality services for citizens. 

A massive issue can arise when trying to understand whose design patterns to follow, your organisations or the third parties.

I have found that it is key to keep a living record of your design patterns, including validation for these design decisions – regardless of where else these are documented. This can take the form of a Sketch file, Excel document – whatever. Maintaining this will help to ensure that you have consistency across the board and can provide clear guidance to fellow members of your team.

You will often find that fellow designers ask why ‘pattern A’ wasn’t followed – when there’s clear design system documentation setting out how this specific pattern should work. You will quickly realise, as a designer of an internal facing third party system, that you are being pulled in two different directions. 

To your left, you have a well-developed design system from your organisation and on your right, you have a well-developed design system from the third-party vendor. Going down the middle and taking influence from both creates interaction inconsistencies that can conflict with existing systems that users may regularly use. It’s important to try and maintain as much consistency as possible. 

I do not believe that there is a definitive answer to the predicament of design pattern conflicts. 

Ultimately, you must make the best design decision for your users. If this goes against the grain of what your third-party system natively does then you must be prepared to fight your corner and provide clear, concise justifications as to why your design decision should be followed.

It’s also important to understand that there will be times where you have to compromise. If the design pattern you’d prefer to implement takes a considerable amount of dev time and effort and risks breaking future upgrades, then you may have to take a step back and contemplate another way. Compromise is the hardest decision to make but there are times where it is inevitable. 

In summary, follow the best solution to allows users to complete their task as seamlessly as possible, document your decisions and be prepared to compromise if other factors begin to turn against you.