When Design Systems Become Monuments

When Design Systems Become Monuments

Design systems start with a promise: consistency, speed, clarity. A single source of truth that frees teams to focus on solving real problems instead of reinventing buttons. But somewhere between conception and reality, most design systems become exactly what they were meant to prevent—bureaucratic monuments that slow everything down.

I’ve watched this happen repeatedly throughout my 22+ years working at the intersection of design, technology, and human experience. Teams invest months cataloging every possible variant of every possible component. They create governance processes that require three approvals to change a border radius. They build comprehensive documentation that nobody reads because it’s divorced from the actual problems people are trying to solve.

The system becomes the goal instead of the means.

The Problem Isn’t Components—It’s Where You Start

Most design systems begin with the wrong question: “What components do we need?” Instead, they should start with: “What experiences are we trying to create, and why?”

When you lead with components, you get a catalog. When you lead with stories, you get a system that knows its purpose.

At SAIL, we’re constantly designing for enterprise-scale challenges—intranets serving thousands of users, AI-powered systems that need to augment human judgment rather than replace it, interfaces where trust isn’t negotiable. Every pattern we create connects directly to a specific user outcome. Not “Here’s a button component with 47 variants,” but “Here’s how we help users feel confident when they’re about to make an irreversible decision.”

Example: Trust-Building Patterns

  • Onboarding flows that reduce cognitive load through progressive disclosure—because overwhelming someone on day one destroys confidence
  • Error states that guide users toward resolution instead of just reporting problems—because “Something went wrong” is where trust goes to die
  • Loading experiences that communicate progress and maintain confidence—because uncertainty breeds abandonment

Each pattern answers: What is the user trying to accomplish, and what do they need to feel to accomplish it successfully? Components emerge from these narratives, not the other way around.

Document Decisions, Not Just Deliverables

Your design system documentation probably looks like this: component name, visual specs, code snippet, done. Maybe a “Do/Don’t” section if you’re thorough.

But that’s just the what. It doesn’t capture the why, and without the why, your system can’t evolve intelligently.

When teams understand the reasoning behind design decisions, they can adapt patterns to new contexts instead of copying them blindly or abandoning them entirely. They can distinguish between “This is how we do it” and “This is why we do it this way, and here’s when that reasoning doesn’t apply.”

Living Documentation Structure

  • Context: What user problem does this solve? What happens if we get it wrong?
  • Constraints: What technical or brand limitations shaped this solution?
  • Experiments: What alternatives were tested and why were they rejected?
  • Evolution: How has this pattern changed based on real-world usage and feedback?

This turns your system from a style guide into a learning artifact. It becomes a repository of institutional knowledge that compounds over time instead of fossilizing.

I write about this extensively in my book Unfinished—how inherited thinking persists long after it stops serving us. Design systems are particularly vulnerable to this. A pattern that made perfect sense in 2020 might be completely wrong for 2025, but if you’ve only documented the output, not the reasoning, no one knows whether it’s safe to change.

Build for Iteration, Not Immortality

The best design systems I’ve encountered treat themselves as living manuscripts—always draft, always improving. They make it trivially easy to propose changes, test variations, and retire outdated patterns.

The worst ones require a steering committee meeting to update a tooltip.

Practical Steps for Systems That Stay Flexible

  1. Version your components so teams can migrate gradually instead of being forced into big-bang updates that break everything
  2. Track usage metrics to identify patterns that aren’t working—if nobody’s using that fancy date picker, maybe it’s not solving a real problem
  3. Schedule regular reviews to evaluate what needs updating—not when someone complains, but proactively
  4. Create contribution guidelines so the whole team can suggest improvements instead of waiting for the “design system team” to notice something’s broken

The goal isn’t to lock in decisions forever. It’s to make good decisions faster while staying open to better ones.

This mirrors how we approach AI-powered systems at SAIL. Technology evolves rapidly. User expectations shift. Business contexts change. Any system that can’t adapt is already obsolete—it just doesn’t know it yet.

Measure Impact, Not Adoption

Here’s a trap most design system teams fall into: measuring success by how many teams use the system.

That’s the wrong metric.

High adoption of a bad system just means you’ve scaled dysfunction. What matters is whether the system helps teams ship better experiences faster—and whether those experiences actually work for users.

Metrics That Actually Matter

  • Time from concept to prototype—is the system accelerating or slowing down iteration?
  • Consistency across touchpoints—are users getting a coherent experience or a Frankenstein interface?
  • User satisfaction with the final product—not with the design system itself, but with what teams build using it
  • Speed of system evolution—how long does it take to go from “this isn’t working” to “we’ve fixed it”?

If teams are following your design system religiously but users are still confused, frustrated, or abandoning flows, the system has failed—no matter how beautiful the documentation looks.

Stay Unfinished

A design system that claims to be “complete” is one that’s stopped learning. The moment you treat it as finished, it starts dying.

The best systems embrace their incompleteness. They acknowledge that some problems don’t have perfect solutions yet. They leave room for experimentation. They encourage teams to challenge patterns when the context changes.

This is the core philosophy behind StayUnfinished—recognizing that many frameworks, processes, and conventions persist long after they’ve stopped serving us. Design systems are particularly prone to this. They become sacred. Untouchable. The way things are done, full stop.

But the world keeps moving. User needs evolve. Technology advances. Business models shift. A design system that can’t keep pace isn’t serving anyone—it’s just creating the illusion of consistency while reality diverges.

Build systems that stay flexible. Document decisions, not just specs. Measure impact, not adoption. And remember: the goal isn’t perfection. It’s continuous improvement in service of real human needs.

About the Author

I’m Haider Ali, a Digital Experience Design Architect exploring how design, technology, and human experience intersect—especially in enterprise environments where the stakes are high and the users are complex. Currently at the Saudi Accelerated Innovation Lab (SAIL) at Aramco, I work on AI-powered systems that augment human capability rather than replace human judgment.

My book Unfinished examines why inherited frameworks persist long after they stop serving us—from design systems that slow teams down to research methodologies that produce misleading insights. Through my publication User First Insight, I write about these patterns and how to break them.

For more on design systems, intelligent interfaces, and questioning established thinking: