Comment by ebiester

I'm an EM at a company doing just this. We built the component library and associated design system, and we're about half way done through the conversion. It's used for all net new work though.

0. It will be more expensive than you anticipate. Underinvestment will mean failure.

1. Use a headless UI library like radix. It will save your bacon.

2. Dropdowns are hell for us. Spend longer than you expect thinking through all the use cases.

3. Storybook is your friend.

4. This should tie to a design system effort. Zeroheight has a lot of great content about this.

5. Make escape hatches everywhere. Let them make as many changes as they see fit and override anything. Don't expect 100% compliance.

* 5a. You will never have 100% compliance. Don't chase it. It's too expensive.

6. Net new is way easier than retrofit. Connect around an initiative first and consider retrofit a separate effort.

7. Your users will have less front end expertise than you. Design around them, not your experts, but don't make the experts' lives worse.