What Is a Design System?

In this episode we shed light on Design Systems. What is a design system? According to Alla Kholmatova’s Design Systems book a design system is “A set of connected patterns and shared practices, coherently organized to serve the purposes of a digital product.” Sounds fancy. Here's another definition from Dan Mall “A Design system helps product teams deliver software to customers faster and better.” We break down what a design system is. We layout features of design systems. We discuss our history with design systems both good and bad. Finally, we look how design systems can extend past a digital experience into the physical world.