Design Systems

Design systems are promised as the ultimate productivity booster. “Build once, use everywhere.” And for the first six months, it’s true. You see the velocity of your feature teams skyrocket as they stop arguing about hex codes and start assembling pages from a library of pre-built components. But as your team grows and your product evolves, the very system that was supposed to speed you up can start to slow you down. At work, we built a comprehensive Angular-based design system that initially reduced delivery time by 40%. However, as we scaled, we hit the “maintenance phase”: the point where the cost of consistency began to rival the cost of development itself. ...

In the ever-evolving landscape of web development, the question of whether to build and develop your own design system is a common one. As design systems become more integral to creating cohesive, scalable, and efficient applications, it’s crucial to weigh the benefits and challenges. This blog post delves into the worthiness of developing a custom design system, best practices for building one, when it’s needed, and the role of JavaScript frameworks like Angular. Additionally, we’ll explore which development teams should be involved in this process and provide a real-world example for clarity. ...