Design systems are on the tip of every designer’s tongue, but the narrative in the industry mainly focuses on why you need a design system and its importance rather than the reality of endless maintenance and internal politics. The truth is that design teams spend years creating these systems only to find out that few people adhere to the guidelines or stay within the “guardrails”. By Luis Ouriach.
A concept that has been long-used in the developer world and loosely agreed upon in the design community is termed “component slots.” This approach allows the design system maintainers to ship component containers with agreed properties — sizing, padding, and styles — whilst allowing for a flexible arrangement of components inside it Ultimately, all we want are components which are:
- Flexible
- Repeatable
- Adoptable
- Indexable
- Logical
- Specific
Components are inherently part of a system that spans design and engineering — and often brand and marketing, too. We, as designers, are seemingly on a mission to call this a design system, but author’d much prefer for us as an industry to steer away from applying the word “design” to activities that are cross-functional by nature. Good read!
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