Design system complexity

Each thing in a design system has (or should have) a purpose or intention.

The more things you have, the harder it is to understand the purpose of things. Especially if they can be used in combination with each other.

Design systems often become a 'hyperobject', something too big to see in its entirety, something no single person can comprehend in it's entirety. https://robinrendle.com/stories/systems-mistakes-and-the-sea/

This complexity is often hard to see until you're in the weeds, and even then it's hard to untangle. Design system talks often speak about the surface, not showing the real problems with fear that it will make it seem like their company is dysfunctional.

There are potential solutions to help reduce complexity but keep options. Most of them have various downsides:

• Compartmentalisation - these things usually need to interact with each other, and it's difficult to create good seams
• Reducing connections - does reduce permutations, but often feels random and increases cognitive load
• Abstraction - probably the best solution, but increases maintenance cost

The best way to solve this is reduction. Reduce the amount of things offered, and you don't have to deal with complexity, or [[20231219102038-combinatorial-explosion]].

https://pjonori.blog/posts/systems-math-explosions/

[[designsystem]] [[designsystemapi]]