Design system deviation

[[Design systems]] often suffer from minor deviations. While innocuous, these deviations have knock-on effects which can result in inconsistencies, a bad user experience, and a general feeling of an incoherent whole for a user.

These deviations can be categorised into three types:

• Accidental deviation. Where a user doesn't know they're deviating. This is often resolved with better guidance, tooling, etc. The root cause is usually a lack of maturity in the DS.
• Wilful ignorance. A user doesn't care that they're deviating. Usually solved with a conversation, education, etc. Pointing out the efficiency of a DS is a good way to get users on board.
• Deliberate deviation. Teams need something different, or think they know better. This one is the most important, as some deliberate deviation can be okay, and other parts can be bad.
  • In general, being more specific is okay - using x component in an area, or making a new component for a given domain.
  • Change/deviation is not okay - don't take a button and make it slightly different.

There's merit into monitoring these deviations. If everyone is deliberately deviating, perhaps that deviation should become the new standard? [[20220704124529-design-system-harvesting]] [[20220704125509-design-systems-snowflakes]]

https://shinytoyrobots.substack.com/p/the-3-types-of-design-system-deviation