McDonald’s is best known for selling hamburgers.

That’s their value proposition: they have hamburgers that you think are delicious.

You might think hamburgers are the most important thing at McDonald’s, which is why they’re best known for it.

You’d be wrong.

A hamburger is a combination of ingredients. Several of those ingredients are used in almost everything McDonald’s makes… ingredients like salt, vegetable oil, or enriched flour. Those are the most important things at McDonald’s, because they need them to make everything.

But they don’t talk about those things. You don’t hear a word about them in TV commercials or social media ads. Just because they’re important to McDonald’s doesn’t mean that they’re important to McDonald’s customers, even though they’re required to make the things that are important to McDonald’s customers.

Hamburgers are more important to McDonald’s customers than salt, so McDonald’s promotes and sells hamburgers, not salt, even though salt is important—required—for making hamburgers.

What’s important to your design system customers? Are you talking to them about salt and vegetable oil when you should really be talking to them about hamburgers?