Design systems are communication tools

Most design system conversations start in the wrong place. They start with components, tokens, and tooling. They should start with a question: what problem are we solving?

A design system isn't a component library. It's a communication protocol. It's how your team agrees to talk about interfaces without having the same conversation a hundred times.

The real value

The components themselves are almost beside the point. The value is in the shared vocabulary. When everyone knows what "primary action" means, you skip thirty minutes of debate in every meeting.

I've seen beautifully documented design systems that nobody uses, and scrappy Figma files that entire teams rally around. The difference isn't polish. It's whether the system solves a real communication problem.

Start with decisions, not components

Before you build anything, document your decisions. Why do you have two button sizes instead of three? Why is your primary color blue? Why do modals have that specific border radius?

These decisions are your system. The components are just how you encode them into something reusable.

Adoption is the only metric

A design system that nobody uses is just a portfolio project. Track adoption relentlessly. If teams are going around your system, that's not a discipline problem. It's feedback. Your system isn't solving their problems.

The best design systems feel inevitable. They make the right thing the easy thing. If using your system requires more effort than not using it, you've already lost.