Our design system component library hit 400 variants last month and I want to scream

Started building this thing about 2 years ago with like 20 basic buttons and inputs. Then product teams kept asking for 'one more variant' for their specific use case. Now we have 47 button styles, 62 modal variations, and nobody knows which one to use. Last Tuesday I spent 3 hours helping a new dev pick between three nearly identical dropdown components. Has anyone else watched their design system bloat into a mess like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_sage1d ago

Time to start a graveyard for unused variants.

grant_torres1d ago

50% of them are probably sitting in someone's drawer, not dead yet. I see people selling "vault finds" that are just old stock nobody wanted.