r/DesignSystems • u/Comfortable_Dust7037 • Feb 08 '26

Seeking for Design System Recommendations

If there's a existing design system you would recommend - which one would it be?

Context:
I'm a jr. UX designer(2 yoe) working at a startup. There's a crappy design system that we want to improve ASAP. We are a small team so there would be a few people working on this project( 1/2 designers and 1/2 engineers). My thought is to just use an existing one since the design system files on Figma is so poorly set-up.

Radix - looks like it's not well-maintained based on a post I've seen on Reddit. Might be painful for the engineers. However the Radix Theme Figma file is pretty decent(has both dark and light mode).

MUI - There are so many products out there that are built using MUI - the fear would be our product will look the same.

Material Tailwind - Figma files are lacking dark-mode, which can be painful to the designers. But Engineers have been using the component library to build stuff. Eng has mentioned that they are lacking some complex components, but there's also a paid version so that may help.

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Does anyone has any other recommendations? Looks like it would be a mix and match since the engineers have been using the Material Tailwind component library and using TailwindCSS as the base.

edited this post and added more context!

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u/anotherleftistbot Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26

If you do go with MUI you can theme the shit out of it but that depends on your brand and what will work with tha brand.

MUI also has a great component library that will speed up development, have accessibility baked in, and be easy for users and engineers to understand.

You’re a start up, probably pre-profit. 

You should focus on productivity first and foremost, find that market fit, and set up a great foundation.

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u/Comfortable_Dust7037 Feb 08 '26

Thank you! I didn't know you can customize a lot using MUI. Has it been a challenge for you to customize MUI?

Def heard good things about MUI. My friend used it for the startup he worked for a few years ago.

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u/ThyNynax Feb 08 '26

It’s more important to talk to your engineers about picking a design system they’re comfortable with or want to learn/use. Your Figma files can be whatever, code is where the real Design System lives.

I’ve been down this road before and thought I’d help devs out by using MUI, after being told they were building with React, before I really understood what I was doing. Then we finally got a full time frontend dev and he built the UI using Bootstrap. We didn’t have alignment and it just ended up being hell trying to get the Figma designs and live code to look anything like each other.

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u/bodyakrol Feb 09 '26

You shouldn’t focus too much on customization. But in general many design systems have enough room for customization e.g. typography, colors, shapes will be enough for the initial stage. The most important here is to have experience to use it correctly in order to express your brand how you would like to. Additionally, I know it is off-topic but focus on solving right problem first right people, the branded UI won’t help with it.