June 13, 2025

Design Systems of the Future

The Question: Episode 053 Wrap-up

On Friday, May 16 of 2025 we held the Episode 053 design system deep dive conversation as part of a series called The Question. Thanks for being part of it.

Design System of the Future.

The Question was shared via email, on LinkedIn, and Bluesky and I received 61 responses. Review the FigJam file, and the raw data, and listen to the opening music (Never Enough by Turnstile) from the Episode 053 deep dive. Major thanks to my friend, Redwoods member, and design system leader, ToniAnn Drenckhahn, for co hosting this episode of The Question.

For the week’s question, we provided this context:

Alright, we’re gonna have some fun this week. We’ve been at this for over a year now—this is our 53rd episode! I was chatting with this week’s co host (hey, ToniAnn!) about how much has changed in the last few years. We thought it might be really fun to have an episode of The Question where we take away all the constraints and imagine what the design system of the future might look like!

Here’s your task between now and Wednesday: tell us what you think tomorrow’s design system will or should look like.

The sky’s the limit. Dream away. We’re looking for some idealism this week so that we can all broaden our perspectives, look up from the grind a bit, and remember what we’re really trying to accomplish with this labor of love we call design systems. If you could take any approach, knowing what you know now, using any technologies or processes or tools, what would you do?

In order to join the deep dive, all you have to do is answer The Question:

Describe your ideal design system of the future. (Remember, no constraints, use your imagination, dream a bit, and have some fun with your answer! If you’re a visual thinker, draw a picture and add a URL to the image here!)

How long have you worked on design systems?

How many people are dedicated to design systems in your current organization?

Who Answered

Two of our three questions were a bit more quantitative in nature. In our pre-deep dive conversations, ToniAnn and I thought it would be really fun to have some data points to correlate against. While the first question allowed people to answer in whatever way they chose, the second two questions provided a few answer for everyone to select from.

When asked how long they have worked on design systems, respondents primarily reported between three and ten years of design system experience.

Based on this, the experience distribution of respondents was the following:

3–5 years: 48% (29 respondents)
6-10 years: 33% (20 respondents)
1-2 years: 8% (5 respondents)
11+ years: 8% (5 respondents)
Less than 1 year: 2% (1 respondent)

Generally, we have a good mix of experiences, leaning toward strong experience given the young maturity of our industry.

The third question was focused on team size.

When asked how many people are dedicated to design systems in their current org, respondents reported a broad distribution of team sizes.

These answers show the following distribution:

Small teams: 49% (27 respondents)
Solo practitioners: 13% (7 respondents)
Large teams: 11% (6 respondents)
Very large teams: 11% (6 respondents)
No dedicated team: 11% (6 respondents)
Unclear responses: 5% (3 respondents)

A large majority of our responses were from folks with 10 or fewer dedicated design system practitioners.

The Conversation

The bulk of our discussion was focused on all the fun ideas people shared about what a design system of the future might look like. Right out of the gate, ToniAnn and I picked up on a wide variety of answers. Some were very futuristic casting a vision for design systems that are “alive” and able to adjust themselves based on the context of their use. Others simply described a modern design system that actually works to accomplish the goals (efficiency, consistency, accessibility, unity) many of us have for our systems work today.

This spectrum of answers reminded Rebecca of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs—it’s difficult to imagine a better future if your needs aren’t being well-met in the present. With this in mind, we asked those attending the deep dive to answer where they fit on a scale from “I’m currently drained by design system work” to “I’m currently energized by design system work” and got an interesting response.

When asked where they fit on a scale from 'drained' to 'energized' about design system work, most respondents were fairly neutral.

We don’t know this, but perhaps some of the respondents who indicated that they are feeling below neutral on this spectrum are also finding it difficult to imagine a fun future for design systems. If that’s you, please know you’re not alone. The Question has been a great source of community for a lot of people feeling this way. I hope you can connect with some other generous system nerds in the design system space soon. Reach out if you want to chat or if you need help getting connected!

Or, maybe some folks just like thinking about the future

We also recognized that we may be overthinking this a bit :) Perhaps some people are just more comfortable thinking about the far future in an open way like this while others think of tomorrow when you ask them about the future. I suspect it’s a bit of both. The main point is, we had a pretty wide spectrum of answers!

So, let’s go to the other end of the spectrum…

More future-y visions

May of you heard our request to let go of constraints and took a fun approach to answering the first question. Here’s one that stood out:

“Metaverse and spatial computing will finally catch-up in the late 2020s, product surfaces will multiply, and design systems will enter a whole new era with multi-modal, audio, haptic, and 3D interfaces to account for. Teams will become more multi-disciplined than ever. The term ‘design system’ prob won’t even exist or have the same connotation anymore. By the mid 2030s, Figma will become a multi-purpose enterprise design & engineering ecosystem, and will acquire Adobe in a total reverse power move…”

So fun! I love that this participant saw how design systems can be an extension of a brand, reaching into more than just standard interface surfaces and touching on audio, haptic, and 3D interfaces as well. I could see that expansion going in both directions—reaching into print and physical space design as well.

It’s alive!!!

There were a series of answers that explored ideas around more contextually aware or intelligent systems:

“…a living, intelligent ecosystem - one that not only supports product teams but actively collaborates with them.”

“It’s adaptive: rather than offering static components, the system evolves based on usage data, accessibility requirements, and brand needs. Components aren’t just prebuilt, they’re generative, capable of reshaping themselves based on constraints like screen size, content type, or regional design preferences.”

“Context-Aware Design Tokens responding to Lighting and noise conditions, Device capabilities, Local cultural norms”

“Documentation would adjust to your learning style and use case, giving you only what’s relevant, when you need it.”

“With built-in adaptability, the system wouldn’t need version numbers or scheduled releases. It would evolve through use, respond in real time, and grow naturally alongside products and people.”

Reading through these after the release of Apple’s Liquid Glass and Google’s M3 Expressive, you can see these well-funded systems moving into areas like this—components that respond to their context by shifting to be more legible, etc.

In Redwoods this week, we’ve been gently arguing over the approach Apple is taking here and how it will impact accessibility on a larger scale as changes roll out. Regardless of our individual opinions, we all agree it’s critical that we keep the core tenants of the web top of mind while navigating the coming future.

Someone took some real time to spell out this concept of a living system much more eloquently than I could:

“My ideal design system of the future is alive.

Not just technically scalable, but biologically intelligent.

Not just a library of buttons, but a language of care.

It adapts in real time to both internal and external change. It knows when consistency builds trust and when it erases context. It evolves with the product, the people, and the culture — not in spite of them.”

This was such a beautiful vision of the future, and it prompted some interesting conversation about how we could start taking steps in this direction today.

Robin shared an idea bout how automation in the future could be more focused around this idea of “hyper-personalization.” Frank shared his perspective that we’re not far from a time when we can easily identify areas in design or dev where teams are operating outside of the design system’s guidelines and then evaluate if that’s better or worse for a specific context. Doug shared how this could spread into the developer experience by giving engineers the ability to quickly identify, from their dev environment, where in the product similar features already exist. All of these ideas, baby steps toward the intelligent model explained above, are within reach!

Systems as a marketplace

There has been a trend in the last year or two where design system teams, often fed up with failed contribution frameworks, are considering a shift in their approach that positions a layer just outside the design system as a marketplace. Several respondents mentioned this in their answers as a viable form for design systems in the future. The hope was to give consuming teams a space to offer their work to each other and to provide the needed visibility into what these teams are working on in their own domains. We recognized that some organizations are already operating like this and it’s a nice balance of uniformity and freedom. ToniAnn also pointed out that, in some ways, this is a tru democratization of design by encouraging healthy collaboration between product teams along with feedback and contribution.

The influence of AI

Of course, a conversation about the future of design systems has to include some AI talk. We discussed our design systems as input to AI so those models can help prototype product flows using the guidelines of the design systems. We covered the use of AI to help with documentation and to even help with support. We even covered the idea that our documentation sites may go away completely, replaced by a very smart chat interface allowing consumers to have “conversations” with the documentation to surface what they need (See the Paste AI Assistant.)

Then we talked about how the role of design systems teams will change as our use of AI evolves. Perhaps the parts of our interfaces that are not hyper-specific to our business can be handled by the robots, leaving us to focus more on the unique problems of our organizations. Or, perhaps our focus shifts to designer and developer experience, creating a bridget between disciplines. I would argue this is a critical part of our jobs now, but I see the line of thinking here.

And, with broader adoption of AI tools, we wondered if there may be ways to bake ethical practices into those tools so that the work they generate is more ethical. This painted a picture of a future where AI is helping us be a better version of ourselves.

Learning Mode

I am continually inspired by the people who show up week after week to dive into the answers we gather. Every participant comes in learning mode. Because of that, we all walk away with broadened perspectives and an appreciation for the experience we are all bringing to these conversations.

To those of you who attended, thanks for joining with such a gracious posture.

Major contributors

Additional resources

Spacial computing for the web (by Frank Stallone)
How AI-integrated design systems and generative component libraries work (by Tony M)
Just another AI in design systems opinion (by Dan Donald)
Design systems for the AI era (by Jon Friedman)

Thank you

Many thanks to all who participated.

If you missed out this week, sign up for The Question and be ready to answer next time.

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