TL;DR: Fixing Design System Challenges at Scale
Design systems are essential for creating scalable and consistent products, but neglecting their evolution can lead to silent failure. At 1% Club, we faced challenges including design inconsistencies, poor documentation, and scalability issues. By redefining ownership, streamlining components, and prioritizing user feedback, we transformed our struggling design system into a growth enabler.
• Key issues: Lack of governance, unclear documentation, and overengineering worsened scalability problems.
• Fixes: Clear team accountability, improved guidelines, and reduced complexity ensured efficiency and trust.
• Lessons learned: Focus on essentials, design for future scalability, and build feedback loops for ongoing improvement.
If you're dealing with scalability concerns in your startup tools, learn more about designing scalable systems with this guide: Safe and Scalable Agentic AI Systems for entrepreneurs.
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How We Almost Got Our Design System Wrong At 1% Club
Design systems are often the backbone of successful digital products, ensuring consistency, scalability, and efficiency in development and design processes. But what happens when a design system starts falling apart without anyone noticing? At 1% Club, we lived through this exact challenge, and I’d like to share what we got wrong, how we fixed it, and the lessons we learned. This journey taught us that a design system’s failure is usually silent, creeping in as small issues that grow into significant obstacles over time. Here’s how we navigated our way through this challenge.
What Are the Warning Signs of a Stumbling Design System?
Our design system at 1% Club didn’t fail because it was visibly outdated or poorly structured. It failed because it couldn’t keep up with the speed and scale of our company’s growth. Here are the critical symptoms we noticed:
- Design inconsistencies across new features, making the product feel fragmented.
- Repeated questions from developers about design implementation, indicating a lack of clarity in documentation.
- Prolonged time to make minor UI updates due to unclear system rules or overly complex components.
- A growing number of “one-off” customizations that bypassed the design system altogether.
These issues signaled that our design system, once a helpful tool, had become a hurdle. We realized something needed to change, but what?
Why Did Our Design System Falter?
The main problem was scalability. As our product and team expanded, our design system’s foundation couldn’t handle the load. Here’s why:
- Lack of governance: No one owned the system’s evolution, leaving gaps in maintenance and updates.
- Minimal feedback loops: We didn’t prioritize user feedback from designers and developers using the system daily.
- Overengineering: Our system became overly complex, filled with rarely used features instead of focusing on essential, high-impact components.
Simply put, we didn’t build with tomorrow in mind. The question we had to answer was: Will this system help us scale or hold us back?
How We Fixed the Foundation
Fixing our design system required going back to basics. We paused ongoing work to address these core issues:
- Redefining ownership: We assigned clear accountability for maintaining and evolving the system. A dedicated cross-functional team of designers and developers took charge.
- Focusing on key components: Instead of trying to support every possible use case, we streamlined the library to prioritize commonly used, high-impact components.
- Improving documentation: We revamped our guidelines to make them clear, concise, and actionable, eliminating ambiguity for developers and designers.
- Building feedback loops: Regular feedback sessions were introduced with teams regularly using the system, ensuring constant iteration and improvement.
These changes weren’t simple, but they made the system far more robust and sustainable. Most importantly, they restored trust among the team.
Lessons for Scaling Startups
Every scaling startup will face design system challenges at some point. Here’s what our experience at 1% Club taught us:
- Ownership is everything: Without clear responsibility, systems stagnate, become outdated, and lose their value.
- Start small and focus on essentials: Building too much, too fast leads to clutter and confusion. Begin with core components that offer the greatest impact.
- Documentation matters: A design system should be your team’s single source of truth. Keep it clear, detailed, and up-to-date.
- Listen to users: Regular feedback from designers and developers uncovers issues before they become systemic problems.
- Design for the future: Always ask, “How will this scale as our team grows?”
How to Spot Trouble Early
Prevention is better than cure. Watch for these early signs of trouble in your design system:
- Teams creating custom components outside of the system.
- Repeated questions about how to use certain elements.
- Increased time spent on small UI changes.
- Design inconsistencies across features or teams.
Identifying these red flags early gives you the chance to address issues proactively, saving time and resources down the line.
Looking Ahead
Design systems aren’t static, they evolve with your company. At 1% Club, we learned that regular iteration and user feedback are critical to success. By committing to these principles, a good design system can become an engine for growth rather than an obstacle.
Your Turn
Are you experiencing design system challenges? Start by asking yourself the honest question we asked at 1% Club: Will this system help us scale or slow us down? Use this as a starting point to assess where your system stands and how it can improve.
Read more about our journey on Muzli – Design Inspiration.
FAQ on Design Systems Challenges and Improvements
What are the key warning signs of a failing design system?
An underperforming design system can manifest through symptoms like inconsistent UI designs across features, repeated developer confusion over implementation due to unclear documentation, long turnaround times for minor updates, and frequent custom solutions bypassing the system. Recognizing these signs early helps in preventing larger scalability obstacles. Explore essential startup skills for female founders.
Why do design systems fail to scale in growing companies?
Design systems often struggle with scalability due to a lack of governance for regular updates, minimal feedback loops to refine usability, and overengineering resulting in unnecessarily complex elements. These factors make adaptation costly and hinder team efficiency. Learn more about agentic AI system design for scalability.
What strategies help prevent overengineering in a design system?
The best approach is to focus on key, commonly-used components and avoid introducing features that address rare edge cases. A strong prioritization framework with collaborative feedback ensures that only high-impact elements are built and maintained. Check out top free alternatives for streamlined workflows.
How can startups streamline the documentation of design systems?
Effective documentation requires it to be clear, concise, and actionable for users. Guidelines should address common queries, supported with visual examples and step-by-step instructions. Regularly updating documentation avoids outdated references and confusion for designers & developers. Read about essential tools for better summaries.
Why is team ownership critical in design system sustainability?
Without clear ownership, systems often degrade due to inconsistent updates, unresolved bugs, and lack of structure for adapting to team or product changes. Dedicated cross-functional teams are essential to maintain and evolve the design framework as the organization grows. Discover the role of community in building sustainable systems.
How do feedback loops improve design system efficiency?
Feedback loops involving regular interaction with end-users of the design system (designers and developers) help identify pain points and areas of improvement early. Continuous feedback ensures the system evolves in alignment with user needs, enhancing usability and consistency. Explore insights from successful female-led startups.
What lessons from 1% Club can startups apply to their design systems?
The experience at 1% Club teaches that investing in clear ownership, streamlining features to essentials, reinforcing user feedback, and asking critical scalability-driven questions can help maintain robust and adaptable systems. Learn from top business model examples.
What does a future-proof design system look like?
A scalable design system combines foundational stability (avoiding breakages during growth), and flexibility (allowing seamless adaptation to new features or team sizes). Layers of governance, modular architecture, and intelligent usage analysis form a well-structured system. Explore the future of startups leveraging modularity.
How can design drift be addressed proactively?
To address design drift before it snowballs, regularly check for inconsistencies, engage teams in structured revision processes, and utilize version control systems. Building predictive models to identify early signs of non-compliance can also prevent the gradual erosion of the system's value.
What are the long-term benefits of maintaining a robust design system for startups?
A reliable design system serves as a growth enabler, streamlining cross-functional collaboration, reducing design debt, and fostering consistent user experiences. It also accelerates development cycles, giving startups a competitive edge. Find out how trends are shaping startup ecosystems.
About the Author
Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.
Violetta is a true multiple specialist who has built expertise in Linguistics, Education, Business Management, Blockchain, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, Game Design, AI, SEO, Digital Marketing, cyber security and zero code automations. Her extensive educational journey includes a Master of Arts in Linguistics and Education, an Advanced Master in Linguistics from Belgium (2006-2007), an MBA from Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden (2006-2008), and an Erasmus Mundus joint program European Master of Higher Education from universities in Norway, Finland, and Portugal (2009).
She is the founder of Fe/male Switch, a startup game that encourages women to enter STEM fields, and also leads CADChain, and multiple other projects like the Directory of 1,000 Startup Cities with a proprietary MeanCEO Index that ranks cities for female entrepreneurs. Violetta created the “gamepreneurship” methodology, which forms the scientific basis of her startup game. She also builds a lot of SEO tools for startups. Her achievements include being named one of the top 100 women in Europe by EU Startups in 2022 and being nominated for Impact Person of the year at the Dutch Blockchain Week. She is an author with Sifted and a speaker at different Universities. Recently she published a book on Startup Idea Validation the right way: from zero to first customers and beyond, launched a Directory of 1,500+ websites for startups to list themselves in order to gain traction and build backlinks and is building MELA AI to help local restaurants in Malta get more visibility online.
For the past several years Violetta has been living between the Netherlands and Malta, while also regularly traveling to different destinations around the globe, usually due to her entrepreneurial activities. This has led her to start writing about different locations and amenities from the point of view of an entrepreneur. Here’s her recent article about the best hotels in Italy to work from.
