How to Maintain a Design System
summary
Eight years of design system work leads to specific takeaways: a well‑documented component library and docs can still be a picture‑perfect system unused when culture and practices differ; about 50% of success depends on organizational environment; a team of 11 can support open contribution while a team of 4 cannot, forcing a pivot from ad‑hoc contributions to a published roadmap and weekly input sessions; usability tests at BT show roughly 50% faster prototyping with a system; measure WCAG audits and release cadence, not just component count.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:17What is a design system
- 5:26Design systems as gardens
- 6:13Design for existing systems
- 12:30Context before convention
- 23:14Measure outcomes not outputs
- 39:25Summary
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