TIL our design system had 47 different button styles across 8 projects

We started an audit last month and just finished counting. It was a mess of one-off changes and old libraries. The number surprised me because we thought we had maybe 20. It matters because our devs spend way too much time just fixing button bugs now. Has anyone else had to clean up a component explosion like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_gray1d ago

47 button styles" sounds bad, but is it really slowing things down that much...

stella8301d ago

What if having more options is actually a good thing? Maybe those 47 styles exist because different parts of the app really do need different looking buttons. Trying to force everything into one or two styles could make the user experience worse. The real problem might not be the number of styles, but just poor documentation for the devs on when to use each one. Fixing that guide could be faster than rebuilding the whole system.