Why do most design systems implode?
Atomic Design by Brad Frost inspired frontend developers to create design systems. It shifted our focus from implementing UIs one page at a time to creating reusable, atomic components. Design systems went from “nice to have” to “must have”.
But a majority of design systems ended up imploding. According to the 2021 Design Systems Survey, only 40% of the systems were successful. Why do some design systems succeed when most fail? I interviewed Brad to find out.
This post shares Brad’s design system pitfalls from seven years of experience teaching Atomic Design to folks at Nike, Techcrunch, Time magazine and more. We’ll dig into what does and doesn’t work:
- 🙅♂️ Not all engineers are made for design system work
- 🛠 Design system developers need custom tools
- 🐌 Design systems go stale fast
- 📕 How Brad Frost uses Storybook
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