The first project with a design system feels slower. The second feels normal. By the fifth, you wonder how you ever worked without one.
Start small
You do not need a hundred components. Buttons, form fields, cards and a type scale cover most screens, and everything else grows from there.
Keep design and code in step
Tokens are the contract. When a colour changes in one place, it changes everywhere, in the design file and in the product.
- Name things by purpose, not by value
- Document the why next to the what
- Review additions as a team so the system stays small