Systems, Mistakes, and the Sea

“The ugly truth is that design systems work is not easy. And what works for one company does not work for another. In most cases, copying the big tech company of the week will not make a design system better at all. And so instead we have to acknowledge how difficult our work is collectively and then we have to do something that seems impossible today—we must publicly admit to our mistakes. To learn from our community we must be honest with one another and talk bluntly about how we’ve screwed things up.”

Robin continues to write interesting pieces about design systems and this one is no exception. This work is hard, and it brings up so much about how our organizations work and how various teams interact, and how we don't always work well together. And I appreciate Robin's writing because he's working on a system full time, so much of the writing on these is done by consultants, so I appreciate the few who're working to maintain and continue on with the same system over time.