Hot take: our component library made things worse before they got better

I joined a team in Chicago about 8 months back. They had this massive design system already built. 600 plus components. Sounded great on paper. First sprint I tried to use it for a simple checkout flow. Took me 3 days just to find the right button variant. There were 14 button styles. Fourteen. Nobody knew which one to pick. Developers started writing their own CSS again. That killed the whole point. We spent the next 2 months cleaning it up. Cut down to 8 button types. Added clear usage docs. Now things actually move faster. Anyone else deal with a system that had too much stuff in it?

2 comments

2 Comments

blair_dixon4d ago

65 components in our kitchen remodel software had a 'save' button with slightly different shades of green. Took us a month to realize people were just closing the browser and starting over rather than hunting for the right one.

tyler8224d agoMost Upvoted

Same buttons everywhere defeats the whole point of a button.