[Go Make Things] Design Systems and Legos

By rahmat hidayat

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

​ Last week, my friend Eric Bailey shared some thoughts on Design Systems on Bluesky… through a certain lens, a design system is just very expensive way for developers to avoid needing to write CSS I'm by no means an expert on design systems, but I've been at companies with one, companies without one, and companies that built one but struggled to get people to use it. Where I often see design systems fail is when they're overly prescriptive. Typically, one of two things happens… It resolves front end developers of the need to understand CSS, resulting in bad code. It's too rigid and inflexible, so it doesn't meet developers' needs and isn't adopted. The most effective design systems I've seen are a bit like Legos… Some pre-built components for more complex or commonly used UI patterns (tabs, modals, accordions, and so on). Lots of adoptions for customizing things (color variants, size options, behavior hooks, and more). A whole ton of little UI bits and bobbles than can be combined as needed. That last part is, in my opinion, critical. Some Design Systems try to actively prevent developers from writing CSS. They're basically just "proprietary Tailwind/Bootstrap." But the goal of a Design System isn't to prevent developers from ever writing CSS. It's to… Make creating often used UI elements faster and easier. Drive consistency through the UI. There were always be things that the system doesn't cover yet that need building. Providing a way for your developers to extend the existing system to build those things (ideally faster and easier) makes them more likely to use it, and provides useful stuff for you to funnel back into the official system. Like this? A Go Make Things membership is the best way to support my work and help me create more free content. Cheers, Chris ​ Want to share this with others or read it later? View it in a browser.​ ​

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