Design Kit

The design kit is the library of components in the design tool. On top of it, the design system adds the developed components, the tokens, the usage documentation and the rules that go with them, all maintained as an internal product. A kit is enough in most cases. The system becomes necessary when several teams contribute in parallel to the same product.

By assessing compatibility with the native components of the target platform (web, iOS or Android), the quality of the documentation, the update frequency, the coverage of common components and the flexibility of customisation. For a product built on an existing framework (Material, Tailwind or Bootstrap), the matching kit is the safest starting point.

When the product has a visual identity that public kits no longer let you respect, or when the team is large enough to keep the library up to date. Before starting from scratch, it is often better to customise a public kit, whose base components are already designed for robustness and accessibility.

By appointing someone in charge who decides on changes and defines how to propose or modify a component. Versioning then lets teams know that an update is available. A poorly governed kit diverges quickly, local variants appear and the main library becomes obsolete.