Reusability determines value

If your Design System is a bunch of colours in a Figma-file with no reuse, then it's not a system. If you always do things a certain way, but you don't involve others, then it's just that: the way you do something. If you come up with a bunch of rules but nobody is able to follow them, it's not a standard. If you have a building without doors, you shouldn't be surprised that nobody's coming in.

The difference between a user base of 1 and more than 1 is vast.

(And I admit, "coding for 1" can be so much fun. Many of my projects in the art academy were "coding for 1". Curiosity-driven, explorative, non-scalable bits of code that were readable no more then 1 person (sometimes less))

Isolation

But unless you work in isolation, you deal with other people. Which means your Design System needs documentation, onboarding, active promotion and anything to drive adoption. I'd rather see a Design System with 1 component and broad reuse, than a suite of components and 1 user.

If you have ways of doing things like workflows, coding standards, agreements on when something is ready, shared architecture or any other expectation: document it. If you want somebody to follow your rules, make sure it's not unspoken and unwritten. Share the rule and, preferably, agree on it together. Do you know the expression "assumption is the mother of all fuckups"? It certainly applies here. And probably double so when you're uncertain, anxious, bad at social cues, value structure, or have any other traits of neurodiversity.

You might have the most beautiful and mathematically clean theory. Or maybe you have a scientific finding that's potentially life-changing. If you're unable to share and communicate, it won't move beyond the stage of "potentially". I assume (ha!) this is why the field of science communication exists. And it goes a step further than awareness. People might nod in unison that your solution is very clever and well thought out, but if it can not be used and applied, then it loses to a theory that does have those qualities.

And a building without doors, that's a nice accessibility-analogy right? If your hiring-process has accessibility-issues, don't be surprised by the lack of people with disabilities in your organisation. If you don't invite people with disabilities to the table, don't be surprised that accessibility isn't on the table.

Work together

The value of what you do is more than the thing you make. Maybe somebody else is your "amplifier" (the marketing department? your communicative manager? your partner?) and it's interesting to be aware and keep track of your relationships with your amplifiers. How can you go from n=1 to n>1, and who can help you get there? Nice that it works for you, even nicer when it works for others as well.

Thanks @alectric and others for the conversation on the Access Club Discord. It is what prompted this blog.