When do you know you’ve built a successful design system?

Much ink has been spilled and countless conversations have been had about what is needed to make a design system successful - indeed about what a design system even is, definitionally.

I don’t have much to add to the discourse there, other than to say I am firmly in the camp that is more of a mindset and a culture than it is a UI kit. An Australian colleague of mine likes to characterize it as a record of design decisions. He’s a much better authority on the topic than I am, but having worked on one for the better part of a year, I find this to be a perfect summary.

Anyway, if I don’t have much to add to this ever-swirling debate, I do have something to say about how you might know when you’ve finally been successful in doing what you’ve set out to do.

“This is much more than we usually get.”

Hear that phrase, as my team did this week from a developer, and it’s a good bet you’ve built something pretty good, especially if what you’re handing off is something that’s already in use somewhere else, and you’ve done little or no work to hand it off.

It was a hugely gratifying moment, of course, to hear that sort of thing after months and months of exhaustive work.

But it was also quite the reminder. Digital design systems have been around for a decade or more now, but to people outside of the experience field - even a software developer at a huge agency - they can still feel new and powerful and even a bit revolutionary.