Today starts our latest cohort of Design System in 90 Days.

If you were starting—or restarting—your design system, what’s the first thing you should do?

Here‘s the first step I teach in the cohort.

Simon Sinek says it in the title of his seminal book: start with why.

At its simplest, design systems are collections of user interface elements. But leaving it at that is too general. A design system with general elements like buttons, cards, footers, and forms aren’t that much more valuable than any open-source UI kit or component library out there. The specific elements you choose make a big difference. So which ones should you choose?

To answer that, look at your company’s mission statement. Here’s a fill-in-the-blank you can use:

“Our design system at {{ COMPANY NAME }} should help us to {{ COMPANY MISSION }}.”

Some examples:

• Our design system at Amazon should help us to be Earth’s most customer-centric company.

• Our design system at Goodwill Industries International should help us to improve the quality of life for individuals and families by helping people reach their full potential through work and learning.

• Our design system at SpaceX should help us to revolutionize space technology and enable people to live on other planets.

Hopefully you can already see how different those 3 design systems might be. With those mission statements, a design system at Amazon might focus on chat interfaces and two-way communication while a design system for SpaceX might focus heavily on data visualization.

This first step is a simple one, but it’s one I see a lot of teams skip. Before assuming you need to make foundational building blocks, connect your design system’s why to your company’s why.