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A “single source of truth”—and other Design System lies
Truth as a shared responsibility.
Perhaps the most misunderstood word in Engish is ‘Truth.’ It has only five letters, but Dictionary.com contains 11 entries to describe what it means. That's a lot of definitions for such a short word, which seems highly suspicious to me.
Most people believe Truth is a ‘statement of fact’ that is ‘without falsehood’, which is certainly one of the definitions, but a great philosopher once said…
“…you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” — Obi-Wan Kenobi
Kenobi teaches that Truth is not necessarily an objective reality ‘without falsehood’ but often ‘what we make of it’ or a subjective truth.
In April, Supernova held a ‘State of Design Tokens 2024’ webinar panel with design system experts Donnie D’Amato, Jacob Miller, and Kathleen McMahon. Before long, the topic of ‘A Single Source of Truth’ for design tokens came up, and some people disagreed on what that meant. Opinions fell into one of three main assertions.
“Code is the source of truth” — Developer
“Design is the source of truth” — Designer
“Truth is a shared responsibility” — Advocate
While each view is valid in its own way, only one can be systemically true and able to grow and scale within an organization.
Truth as Shared Responsibility
Where workplace collaboration is a virtue, Truth as a Shared Responsibility is the most attractive of the three. This view believes unhealthy power structures can be introduced without cross-disciplinary collaboration, which may threaten the success of the Design System.
However, shared responsibility within an organization carries all the problems of school group projects.
- Uneven Contributions (loading/overachieving)
- Conflict of Expectations
- Reward/Recognition Distribution
