Design and product work
Design system
A shared set of reusable components, patterns, rules and documentation that teams use to build a product consistently.
A design system is more than a component library. It includes the design tokens (colour, type, spacing), the components built from them, guidance on when to use each pattern, and the process for changing any of it.
Its value grows with the number of teams using it. One team gets little from it; twenty teams building on the same system save a great deal of duplicated work and ship a far more consistent product.
Published studies on design system efficiency report gains in a wide range, very roughly 25 to 50 per cent on specific tasks, but they are small and mostly vendor-adjacent. The range is more honest than any single figure.
Common mistake
Building a system before there is anyone to use it. A system needs consumers, and an owner, to pay back.