Product designer at a fintech. I built our design system alone, and I'm writing about the systems I use to keep shipping without burning out. Berlin.
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Your design system will be used by people who do not read documentation on purpose. They read it at 10 p.m. when something is broken. Write it for that moment.
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A button is a component. A login screen is a pattern. Most failed design systems are failed because the team tried to make components out of patterns.
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A design system does not need ninety tokens on day one. It needs twenty. Here are the twenty I actually shipped, and why I stopped there.
A new step in the playbook “Shipping a Design System Solo”
Spending a week reading your own product is the single highest-value thing you can do before building a design system. Here's how I did it, and what I found.
