Dan Mall explains why "design system" resists a simple definition. He draws on Jared Spool's "rendering of intent" and Donella Meadows' systems theory to argue that a design system is an intentional set of interconnected things that produce repeated behavior.
There are lots of different definitions of design systems out there. Why do you think that is? I think it's because there's a lot of different definitions of the word design and of the word system, and both of them are very broad. My favorite definition of design comes from Jared Spool, and he says design is the rendering of intent. My favorite definition of systems comes from this book, Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows. In this book, Donella Meadows says, a system is a set of things, people, cells, molecules, or whatever, interconnected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. So if we put those two things together, it really says a design system is an intentional set of connected things that create repeated behavior. I mean, that could apply to almost anything.
