> Culture Amp was well on its way to doing this in 2018, when things started to get hard for the recently-formed Design System team.
This is the problem right there. Design system teams never work well. A design system that’s complicated enough to need a dedicated team always creates more friction than it’s worth. Turns out that it’s really hard to standardize UI components in a way that makes them flexible enough to be used across different teams.
The only design systems I’ve seen work well are the minimal ones that just define the color values of the visual theme and look of some basic components like buttons but leave the implementation up to the individual devs.
This is the problem right there. Design system teams never work well. A design system that’s complicated enough to need a dedicated team always creates more friction than it’s worth. Turns out that it’s really hard to standardize UI components in a way that makes them flexible enough to be used across different teams.
The only design systems I’ve seen work well are the minimal ones that just define the color values of the visual theme and look of some basic components like buttons but leave the implementation up to the individual devs.