"Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a totally coherent system bound to context and behavior." — Kenneth L. Pike
The web has accents. So should our design systems.
The Phonemes and Grammar of Design
Design systems aren't just component libraries—they're living languages. Think of design tokens as phonemes (the smallest units of sound), components as words, patterns as phrases, and layouts as sentences. Every interface we build becomes a conversation, and the stories our products tell shape the user experience.
But here's what we've overlooked: the more fluently a language is spoken, the more accents it can support without losing meaning. English spoken in Scotland differs from English in Sydney, yet both are unmistakably English. The language adapts to context while preserving its core grammar. As a Brazilian Portuguese speaker who learned English with an American accent and now lives in Sydney, I see this dynamic every day.
Our design systems must work the same way. Rigidly following visual rules creates brittle systems that crack under contextual pressure. Fluent systems bend—they don't break.
When Consistency Becomes a Prison
The original promise of design systems was simple: consistent components would speed up development and unify experiences across products. But as systems matured and products grew more complex, that promise has turned into a trap. Teams file hundreds of exception requests. Products ship with workarounds instead of system components. Designers spend more time defending consistency than actually solving user problems.
Our design systems must learn to speak dialects.
A design dialect is a systematic adaptation of a design system that maintains core principles while developing new patterns for specific contexts. Unlike one-off customizations or brand themes, dialects preserve the system’s essential grammar while expanding its vocabulary to serve different users, environments, or constraints.
Learning from Chaos: The Booking.com Lesson
At Booking.com, I learned this lesson the hard way. The team A/B-tested everything—color, copy, button shapes, even logo colors. As a designer with a background in graphic design and experience building brand style guides, I found this shocking. While everyone fell in love with Airbnb’s pristine design system, Booking grew into a giant without ever considering visual consistency.
The chaos taught me something profound: consistency isn’t ROI—solved problems are.
When you prioritize consistency over context, you end up with beautiful screens that don't work for actual users. Booking.com’s relentless testing focused on outcomes, not adherence to a system. That’s the mindset we need to bring into our design systems today.
The Shopify Polaris Failure: A Case Study
At Shopify, Polaris was our crown jewel—a mature design language perfectly suited for merchants on laptops. As a product team, we were expected to adopt Polaris as-is. Then my fulfillment team hit an “Oh, Ship!” moment.
We faced the challenge of building an app for warehouse pickers using our interface on shared, battered Android scanners in dim aisles, wearing thick gloves, scanning dozens of items per minute, many with limited English understanding.
Task completion with standard Polaris: 0%.
Every component—from button sizes to text contrast—failed in that context. We needed a dialect of Polaris that preserved its core logic (the grammar) but adapted its vocabulary (buttons, fonts, layouts) for a radically different environment. Once we created that dialect, task completion soared.
Embracing Design Dialects
Design dialects are not an excuse for chaos. They are a systematic way to extend a design system's reach while maintaining its integrity. Here’s how to start:
- Define core principles that must never change (e.g., accessibility, brand values, interaction patterns).
- Identify contextual stressors—user needs, device constraints, environmental factors—that require adaptation.
- Create dialect rules that specify how components can vary without breaking the system’s grammar.
- Test and iterate across dialects, just as you would within a single system.
By allowing dialects, we move from consistency as a goal to coherence as a goal. A coherent system is one that makes sense in every context, even when it looks different. That’s the real power of design systems—not to constrain, but to empower.
Let’s break the rules, but never the system.