@itspatmorgan Comparisons are generally terrible to begin with. You’re making something for your orgaization’s and product’s needs; so unless you’re making the exact same thing as them in exactly the same way, it’s going to be unique. Other systems are good for learning, but foolish to copy

@3fn Well said, Peter.

@itspatmorgan Comparison is the thief of joy. I’ve been digging deep into different startup design systems from some customers and: 1) I’m genuinely impressed they’re actually working this way (still not as common as we may believe); 2) just a little standardization would, in my opinion, go a…

@_allen_smith Yep, startup design systems need to be much more pragmatic. In large part, they should be curating the best elements of major systems, remixing them slightly, and combining them with whatever limited custom stuff they need for their scenario.

@itspatmorgan Very true. Our Design System was based on Material Design so we benefited greatly from Google’s efforts and large team. But even they made mistakes (emphasizing the FAB and burger menus for desktop apps in the early days). We still needed to define our unique needs.

@amproehl 100%. For me, it was about curating the specific subset of elements from a mega-system like Material that would help my scenario, remixing them slightly, and supplementing with custom stuff needed for our unique environment.

@itspatmorgan I feel the same way when I think about research, interviews and cycles working solo. I can barely name my layers.

@MaxMantegna Definitely. Gotta be pragmatic in that environment!

@itspatmorgan this is a very classic problem for designers What you hear online is often very impractical for most of us

@sakkybl Probably true for a lot of professions, I imagine!

@itspatmorgan I'm at the very start of creating this—and have fallen into this trap. My biggest wonder is how to decide where to start..

@itspatmorgan I’m preparing an article where I talk about the size of DS and I included a similar point as a disclaimer. Comparing and expecting the same results as a team of 40 members with only 5 can really hurt the team and its goals. A roadmap can help managing these expectations.