The most common failure mode of a Design System isn't that it's ugly—it's that it's ignored. You build a beautiful UI kit in Figma, you publish it, and three months later, the production app is full of hard-coded hex values and rogue button styles.
Why does this happen? Because we treat Design Systems as artifacts (static libraries) rather than operations (living workflows).
"If a component exists in Figma but isn't matched 1:1 in your codebase, it's not a system component. It's a drawing."
The "Source of Truth" Fallacy
Designers love to say Figma is the source of truth. Engineers say it's the codebase. This friction kills consistency. The reality is that the "truth" is the contract between the two.
A successful operational system requires shared vocabulary. If a designer calls it "Neutral-500" and the developer calls it "Grey-Dark," you have already lost. The system must enforce a shared language, usually through design tokens that are synced automatically.
Documentation as a Blocker
Nobody reads a 50-page PDF on "How to use our buttons." Documentation must be where the work happens.
For designers, this means guidance built directly into Figma components description fields. For developers, this means JSDoc comments and Storybook stories that explain *why* a prop exists, not just *what* it is.
- Automate token generation from design files.
- Lint for hard-coded values in PR reviews.
- Treat documentation updates as part of the "Definition of Done."
Governance over Policing
Finally, a system that requires a "Design Police" to enforce it will fail. The system must be the path of least resistance. It should be easier to use the system component than to build a custom one.
If your system is rigid and blocks teams from shipping, they will bypass it. Build in "escape hatches" for experimentation, but have a clear process for folding those experiments back into the core system if they succeed.