When creating a library based on an existing design system, teams can become perplexed as to what library should be made available.

The options are:

• As-Is: The production site reflects the current state of the experience, including all the concessions and trade-offs made to get launched. As such, it may not be an optimized design and may not be exactly how design would be built in the future.
• As-Intended: Even though trade-offs were made during the design process, a design team may still have design artwork and requirements reflecting a preferred, optimal experience.
• To-Be: While a site may already be in production, there’s either already emerging new designs launching soon or planning underway to redesign a considerable portion of the existing experience.

Deciding on what kind of library you should build out can be a tough balancing act, one that may even blend more than one of the above options. How do you decide? Generally, think about your library objectives and fully understand what “reuse” of these components really means.

Will designers, publishers, and others continue to update existing and create new pages that employ as-is suboptimal components unchanged? Then it makes sense to catalog and publish as-is components.

Will your group be launching updates to the experience to move towards as-intended components? Then include those in your library.  If not, then our best intentions may not be useful to other resources working within the reality — and constraints — of an implemented system.

Will a new site design that includes a range of to-be components be launching soon, but other team members cannot utilize the new components until 6 months later when the site is live? Then refrain from adding those items to your library until it makes sense for others to benefit from them.

Thoughts?