Your Design System Isn't Failing Because It's Bad.

Every D&D group has that one player who stops the game to check page 247 of the Player's Handbook. The rules lawyer. The person who knows every modifier, every edge case, every obscure interaction between spell components and terrain types.

Design systems fail the same way.

You build documentation that covers every possible scenario. You define tokens for button-hover-shadow-opacity-secondary-mobile. You create governance that requires three approvals to change a color. Perfect. Comprehensive. Completely unusable.

Most design systems don't fail because the components are bad. They fail because teams treat the system as the destination instead of the tool. The rules become more important than shipping. Engineers can't find what they need, so they build their own version. Designers stop contributing because the process is too heavy. Your perfect system sits unused while everyone works around it.

The systems that actually work understand something crucial: the system serves the work, not the other way around. Good documentation answers "which button do I use?" in under 30 seconds. Governance exists to maintain quality, not to slow people down.

If your design system feels like it's failing, check whether you're optimizing for completeness or for actual use. Those are very different games.