Freedoms and limitations of design systems

Hello! We are a team of designers and developers creating Rostelecom's digital design system. What for? There are many products and projects in a large enterprise, and each of them has needs that a design system can cover.

When you start building such a system, it seems to you that the first thing to do is to design all the necessary components. You conduct research, audit current projects and understand that this list of components is what you need, that is, you solve current problems and look a little into the future, assessing what else you may need. 

And in the process, the question arises - how will users use the design system? Will they follow all the rules and guides if we put them into the system? If we write detailed manuals, will they be read? And if we don’t write, will there be a lot of questions about the boundaries and correctness of using the components? Which is better: a rigidly fixed instruction or, conversely, no rules?

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The ratio of elements in the layout

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The share of design system components in the layout
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Custom components in the layout

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And here we advised the designer to use the notification from the design system in the personal account card, so as not to customize again
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Here the designer mixed the button and input of different styles and created an icon with a label.  They suggested that everything can be taken from the design system, and even one style
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