Signs it is time to revisit design systems

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. A few signals that design systems is due some attention.

Design decisions are the ones clients feel most confident arguing about, which makes it worth separating taste from evidence early. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• A shared component set stops every page reinventing the same button
• Tokens for colour, spacing, and type keep decisions consistent

Where to start

The system pays for itself around the third or fourth page. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

How to tell if yours is fine

The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. Three things worth confirming about design systems before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• The system pays for itself around the third or fourth page — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.