The difficulty in implementing the front-end design system lies in three aspects: unified cognition, technical maintenance, and document friendliness. 1. It is difficult to unify cognition. Designers, front-end and products have different understandings of the value of design systems. We need to promote consensus based on use cases and use high-frequency components to pilot the reuse value. 2. The technology implementation and maintenance costs are high, the component adaptation is difficult, the design changes are frequent, and the version management is lacking. It is recommended to adopt a modular architecture, Monorepo management and automated testing. 3. The documents are not friendly enough, the examples are insufficient, the parameters are unclear, and the search is inconvenient. Playground should be provided, the usage scenarios are clarified, the documents are automatically generated and the FAQ section should be established. The design system needs to be continuously operated and optimized regularly to truly improve collaboration efficiency.

During the implementation of the front-end design system, it is indeed impossible to simply introduce a set of component libraries to solve the problem. Many teams will encounter various obstacles when promoting the design system, resulting in the efficiency not increasing but decreasing, or even giving up halfway.

1. Unified cognition is difficult

The original intention of designing a system is to unify the UI style and improve collaboration efficiency, but the premise is to make all roles - designers, front-end development, product managers - understand and recognize its value. In reality, people often pay more attention to the tasks at hand and are not very interested in the construction of the "abstract layer".

• Designers may feel that the norms limit creative play
• The front-end believes that maintaining the component library is an additional burden
• Products are worried that the process will become complex and affect the delivery speed

The key to solving this problem is to promote consensus “from the use case”. For example, first select a few high-frequency components (buttons, forms, etc.) for pilot projects, so that everyone can see the efficiency improvement and quality improvement brought by reuse, and then gradually expand.

2. High technical implementation and maintenance costs

Many people think that everything will be fine with the components and documentation of Figma. In fact, the real difficulty lies in how to convert them into maintainable code and maintain consistency.

• Different projects have different technology stacks, and components are difficult to adapt
• Frequent design changes, high cost of synchronous updates
• Lack of version management and rollback mechanism

It is recommended to adopt a modular architecture progressive release strategy:

• Divide component modules by function to avoid the difficulty of maintaining a unified library
• Manage multiple packages with Monorepo for easy on-demand reference
• Introduce the Changelog mechanism to clarify the impact range of each update

In addition, automated testing must not be missed. If you rely on manual inspection, problems such as style regression and interaction exceptions are easily ignored or delayed.

3. The documentation and usage method are not friendly enough

Even if there is a component library, if the developer doesn't know how to use it for a long time, or the documentation is inconsistent with the actual API, it will be difficult to promote this system.

Frequently asked questions include:

• Too few or too ideal, departing from real business scenarios
• The parameter description is unclear and lacks best practices
• Lack of search function, low efficiency in finding components

The direction of improvement can be:

• Provides a Playground environment and supports real-time debugging
• Each component comes with "When to use" and "Things to note"
• Automatically generate API documents to reduce manual maintenance costs

You can also consider establishing a FAQ or Troubleshooting section to answer high-frequency questions in a concentrated manner.

Basically that's it. The implementation of the front-end design system is more like a continuous operation process than a one-time project. It requires someone to be responsible for a long time, collect feedback regularly, and optimize the experience to truly play a role.

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