2024-11-02 · 5 min
Design Systems Are Not the Point
Why most design systems collapse under their own weight, and what to optimise for instead.
Every team I work with wants a design system. Very few actually want what a design system gives them, which is constraint.
A system that nobody breaks is a system that nobody ships against. The point isn't the tokens. The point is shared judgement - a small number of correct answers, agreed in advance, so the team can argue about the right things.
Build less of it. Document the bits that change behaviour, not the bits that change pixels. And put a real designer in the room when the system is challenged, every time.