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Summary
As large organizations embed design systems, they'll often find they have multiple systems. A search for the "one source of truth" collides with another truth: change and coordination across business units is hard, alignment is costly and effortful, and sometimes there's good reasons for having many systems loosely coupled. In this conversation, we explored the nature of systems of systems, tiered for participation at many levels across an organization.
Key Insights
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Design systems should be modeled as multi-tiered ecosystems rather than monoliths to manage scale and complexity effectively.
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Adoption varies widely; some products embed design without using the system code, leading to inconsistency and fragile connections.
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Successful design systems generate three outputs: design assets, component code, and comprehensive documentation.
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Separation of design assets and code repositories is sometimes necessary due to diverse frameworks and product needs.
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Acquisitions introduce brand and system fragmentation requiring strategic alignment and often dual system coexistence.
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Generational upgrades of design systems incur high cost and complexity, often delaying adoption of new versions.
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Descendant systems allow subsidiary teams to extend or override components, balancing consistency with localized needs.
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Organizational tribalism results in siloed design systems tied to business units, complicating enterprise-wide convergence.
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Effective governance involves ongoing onboarding, support, and negotiation of appropriate variation boundaries.
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Involving content strategists and brand teams early is critical for embedding content, tone, and identity into design systems.
Notable Quotes
"Design systems are information products as much as they are code or UI."
"One source of truth is the ideal, but reality often has many systems operating in parallel."
"Not every product will adopt the system fully; some embed the design manually in their own code."
"Separating design and code can be a don't unless justified by framework diversity or scale."
"Acquisition success starts by engaging brand teams, not jumping straight to migration analysis."
"A design system isn’t a single big thing to adopt or reject; it’s an architecture with rooms for subgroups."
"Allowing controlled overrides like color changes can be justified if it meets localized business goals."
"Banks are among the hardest enterprises to unify under a design system because they move deliberately slow."
"Onboarding speed and success are critical to developer adoption and overall system health."
"Creating one adopted component can be harder than creating 100 that go unused."
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