The biggest impact of this system was scalability: once the components were built in Drupal, the client’s team was able to independently create new pages without design bottlenecks. This validated the system’s success—the building blocks were flexible enough for non-design teams to use directly.

However, with this freedom came challenges. The team often overused the wide variety of options, introducing too many color combinations and requesting additional header variants beyond what was functionally necessary. Looking back, I realized the importance of stronger documentation and usage guidelines. While I delivered a robust component library, I should have invested more time in governance—defining clear “do’s and don’ts” to prevent inconsistency.

I view design systems as a superpower: they give teams incredible efficiency, but with great power comes great responsibility. Without guardrails, reusable components can just as easily create chaos as they can enable consistency. This experience reinforced that successful design systems are not just about building components, but about guiding how they should be used responsibly.