Why Design Systems Fail

Una Kravets—An Event Apart video 28/04/23 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPIBN7G08E4

The main reasons design systems fail:

Investment. An organisational level problem. For a design system to be successful, you need continuous investment into improving it. This also includes ownership. Someone that is dedicated to it's success. An advocate.
Communication. Communication needs to be multidirectional. Ask questions, and make your use feel heard. Incorporate their feedback.
Buy-in. From users, product managers, devs, designers, etc. You need people to want to use your system. You need to show the value. Hackathons are a great way to gain buy-in. These people them become advocates and investment
Solid architecture. Build your system with scalability and composability in mind. Having multiple systems build on top of a single core, similar to [[20220808103811-spotify-encore]]. Semantic versioning. Proper releases. Just good engineering fundamentals. Don't wait to namespace your system.
Reduce friction. Make it the path of least resistance. If it's not, people won't use it.