You can go to a grocery store and buy sugar, butter, eggs, flour, baking powder and milk. You can use those ingredients to make a cake.

You can also go to a grocery store and buy a pre-made cake.

Both versions get you a cake, eventually. Both versions help you quell your hunger, eventually. One does it faster, without having to do the work yourself.

Many design system teams act like a grocery store where feature teams can inquire basic ingredients, ready-made cakes, or both. When design system teams first start, they don’t have the resources to supply both ingredients and cakes, so they have to pick one.

Many assume it’s more logical to start with ingredients. After all, they’re the “foundations”, so why not start there?

I suggest going the other way.

Chef David Chang opened up Momofuku Noodle Bar in 2004 and eventually took the world by storm, opening 16 other restaurants since. Customers love the in-restaurant experience, which paved the way for the launch of the consumer goods line in 2020.

I think that’s a great model for design system teams: get your customers hooked with the done-for-them experience, then give them the ingredients to do it themselves once they’re already fans.

If all you supply is ingredients—even if the ingredients are world-class—you’re still training your customers to get used to the fact that they still have to do work once they buy from you. If you only sold cakes, you train your customers to believe that you can supply their needs—and fast.

If you don’t know where to start, sell cakes, not the ingredients to make cakes.