The takeaway
Treat a design system as shared product infrastructure. Agree semantic tokens, component behavior and maintenance responsibilities between design and development. Start with real journeys and document interactive states. Verify accessibility in the complete interface; matching design values alone does not establish compliance.
Agree a shared vocabulary
Undocumented design decisions make implementation harder to review consistently. A shared vocabulary connects design intent with code without requiring every tool to use identical internal names.
Use semantic color roles, typography and spacing tokens, then explain the behavior and constraints of each component.
Review accessibility in context
Review text contrast, keyboard access, visible focus, target size and interaction semantics against the relevant WCAG criteria. Good base components help, but composed screens still need review.
Content, reading order, labels and error handling can introduce accessibility problems even when components have been checked independently.
Maintain the system alongside the product
Build components needed by real workflows, document their states and review changes with the people implementing them.
Assign maintenance responsibility, version changes and keep design and code documentation aligned. A component library alone does not prove adoption or business impact.