Design Systems at Scale

Building and maintaining design systems across multiple products is one of the most challenging yet rewarding aspects of modern frontend development. After years of working with design systems at various scales, I've learned that success lies not just in the components themselves, but in the processes and culture around them.

The Foundation: More Than Components

A design system is often misunderstood as simply a component library. While components are crucial, a true design system encompasses design tokens, documentation, guidelines, and most importantly, the governance model that keeps everything cohesive.

The most successful design systems I've worked with started small—focusing on the most commonly used components and gradually expanding based on actual usage patterns rather than theoretical completeness.

Adoption Challenges

The biggest challenge isn't technical—it's human. Getting teams to adopt and contribute to a design system requires careful change management, clear communication of benefits, and making the system genuinely easier to use than building from scratch.

Versioning and Evolution

Design systems are living entities that must evolve with product needs. Establishing clear versioning strategies, migration paths, and deprecation policies from the beginning saves countless hours and prevents fragmentation.

The key is finding the balance between consistency and flexibility—providing enough structure to ensure coherence while allowing teams the freedom to innovate within those constraints.