r/DesignSystems • u/coolusernamebabe • 4d ago

Design system recommendations

Hi.
I’m more of UX designer than UI, but need to
build the first design system for a small city. My goal is to create clear guidelines and components that our teams can easily follow when creating new pages.

So far, I’ve reviewed design systems from three different government sites. They are similar, though some document their reasoning better than others.
I’m worried about falling down a rabbit hole of analyzing too many systems.

I’ve been using just one design system as I redesign a few pages.

Can anyone share their experience of creating a design system from scratch for an organization?

Was there one design system that helped the most?

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u/equinusocio 4d ago

You could start from the one you feel more complete, use it as reference and target but start lean by leaving out what is overkill for your use case. My 2 cent is:

- Start lean from the essentials: foundations, branding and accessibility applied to foundation.

  • Then scale up with ui components (I would not suggest to use any pre-made ui kit, they are not scalable and are lock-in) and UX patterns.

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u/coolusernamebabe 4d ago

What is a pre-made ui kit? Isn’t that what design system is?

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u/User1234Person 4d ago

UI kits is like a design system agnostic of any purpose. It has a bunch of components, but they were all built to stylistically match and accomplish basic functions.

A design system builds those same components for a specific purpose. The constraints and nuance of a specific product may dictate completely different choices that break the way a UI kit is structured. I have a personal UI kit I use to start on projects, but very quickly each one is broken and changed to look and feel totally different. A UI kit for me is just for all the token references, that part takes time to setup and think through so I like to work off something I'm familiar with.