7 insights about design systems

If you’re familiar at all with design systems then I definitely don’t need to introduce you to Dan Mall. He’s as OG as it gets.

Here are 7 golden nuggets I took from our recent convo:

1️⃣ Atomic design: Most people approach atomic design backward. The right way is to build the big thing first…. then take it apart to identify the little pieces (not vice versa)

2️⃣ Future of design systems: In two years we’ll be talking about design systems MORE… But then in 5 years, Dan suggests that we won’t talk about them at all 👀

3️⃣ Figma variables: It's now too easy to create tokens. Dan shares his thoughts on how lots of teams are going to get themselves in sticky situations if they’re not careful.

4️⃣ Getting buy-in: Too many people wait for official buy-in to start building a design system. That’s why Dan advises more designers to be “rascals” (You’ll see why this is my favorite one 😅)

5️⃣ Measuring success: Instead of adoption, we should measure success by how often the design systems team is invited to product kickoff meetings

6️⃣ If you're thinking about design systems you should only pursue the role if you want to be a COLLECTOR, not a CREATOR

7️⃣ The best design systems teams don’t look for opportunities to grow the system… They look for ways to REMOVE components 👀

Dan shared a lot of ideas that definitely challenged my thinking on design systems and even AI (hence the title 😅) so I think you’ll really enjoy this episode.