THE TIMING PROBLEM IN DESIGN SYSTEMS

Summary from the TLDR Design newsletter

Design systems often stall when perfectionism overtakes practicality, as teams polish components endlessly while product teams build their own solutions rather than wait. The most critical elements—accessibility, semantic structure, token consistency, stable APIs, and sensible defaults—can't be compromised, but everything else is a judgment call that shouldn't delay shipping. Components gain adoption by arriving when teams need them at 80% completeness, then improving through real-world use rather than theoretical perfection.