Re:Ship Faster by Building Design Systems Slower
by kabes on Monday February 26, 2024 @03:13AM
(#39508707)
They could do that just fine if they picked an existing UI library on a company level. There's no need to invent their own.
Never in the history of software has one lost a sale due to how the buttons of their product look like.
And I guarantee you that their internal library will be worse than popular options out there. The amount of time I've been in meetings where 10 smart, well-paid people from 10 different products in a company are endlessly discussing paddings on an input field... It's just a complete waste of time.
Re:Ship Faster by Building Design Systems Slower
by onion2k on Monday February 26, 2024 @03:54AM
(#39508980)
Every company I know that has a design system the developers actually use based their first version on an open source library. Companies do exactly what you're suggesting. Their design system is usually little more than a config file for the library they've based it on, with some custom components for the bits that don't come by default.
That's not the reason why anyone builds a design system. Companies need a design system so their own developers can build consistent UIs easily. If you've ever seen the output of a company that has lots of teams and no consistent way of building UIs you'd be horrified. Their products are a mess, and the UX is terrible because each app (or part of an app) works differently depending on which team built it. A design system is an attempt to solve that problem.
Most companies have no reason to release their design system to the public. When a company does that it's usually dev rel, or just plain marketing.