Introduction

Design systems enable teams to build better products faster by making design reusable—reusability makes scale possible. This is the heart and primary value of design systems. A design system is a collection of reusable components, guided by clear standards, that can be assembled together to build any number of applications.

Regardless of the technologies and tools behind them, a successful design system follows these guiding principles:

• It’s consistent. The way components are built and managed follows a predictable pattern.
• It’s self-contained. Your design system is treated as a standalone dependency.
• It’s reusable. You’ve built components so they can be reused in many contexts.
• It’s accessible. Applications built with your design system are usable by as many people as possible, no matter how they access the web.
• It’s robust. No matter the product or platform to which your design system is applied, it should perform with grace and minimal bugs.