A design systems is only as useful as its adopted by product teams to ship work using tokens and components from the system. That’s why adoption is one of the key factors to focus on to guarantee the success of a design system.
When working within a design systems team it often involves actively promoting the use of the design system, as well as collaborating with product teams to ensure they understand how the system works, how it can meet their needs, and how it can help them deliver better experiences.
Therefore, a crucial part of this is process is removing any barriers that prevents team to adopt the design system in the work that they do. Poor adoption of a design systems means that teams resort to using custom tokens or components, it can lead to inconsistencies across the product.
This lack of coherence can create a fragmented user experience, undermining the very purpose of a design system – to provide a unified, consistent, and efficient approach to design and development. In essence, without widespread adoption, a design system’s potential is significantly diminished.
