We did this [0] as a 3-devs startup, and it was one of the best things we ever did!
For us, we found ourselves repeating again and again when we had multiple UI projects. It became boring and we decided to write the design system. It took us about 3-4 months to complete this.
- It takes a LOT of effort to migrate old projects. A LOT! So, make sure you really have the time and effort for a migration like that.
- In my opinion, it only makes sense to have a component library if you have multiple different projects / repos.
- Try not to reinvent the wheel. Design your components library, but follow a pattern of a popular library so you can see "hey if you have used this library, it's the same here. Just the UI is different"
- Write an extensive documentation with examples (here's ours: [1])
- In our case, integrating dark mode, docs, and i18n into the design system (in an opinionated way) saved us a lot of time.
For us, we found ourselves repeating again and again when we had multiple UI projects. It became boring and we decided to write the design system. It took us about 3-4 months to complete this.
- It takes a LOT of effort to migrate old projects. A LOT! So, make sure you really have the time and effort for a migration like that.
- In my opinion, it only makes sense to have a component library if you have multiple different projects / repos.
- Try not to reinvent the wheel. Design your components library, but follow a pattern of a popular library so you can see "hey if you have used this library, it's the same here. Just the UI is different"
- Write an extensive documentation with examples (here's ours: [1])
- In our case, integrating dark mode, docs, and i18n into the design system (in an opinionated way) saved us a lot of time.
[0] https://github.com/hyvor/design [1] https://hyvor-design.pages.dev