# How to audit a design system
## 👋 Introduction
Beginning a design system is pretty thrilling, but pause before diving headfirst into creating a ton of components, styles or frameworks.
In the first few weeks, take a good look around: audit, explore existing designs solutions, and dive into the teams’ use cases. This discovery work will help build a sense of how the design system should support the product.
***
## 1️⃣ Collect **assets for audit**
To facilitate a smooth audit, gather as many design and code assets associated with your design system as possible, including:
* All design files of existing and upcoming features or products
* Any existing style guides or design system files
This is also a good time to collect roadmaps from the product teams. This information will help determine potential pilot for the project in later steps.
***
## 2️⃣ Identify existing design approaches
### 1. Group similar components
After gathering the assets, comb through them to:
* Group similar components visually and label their origin from specific features or products.
* Identify commonalities among these components. This will help while abstracting the component.
This is purely an objective exercise; refrain from making any judgments or evaluations for now. The purpose is to **understand existing design solutions and use cases.**
### 2. Interface inventory
While grouping components, also take a note of the frequency of usage of these components creating an **interface inventory.** This will help a lot in selecting a pilot and prioritising design system components effectively later on.
Interface inventory
***
## 3️⃣ Identify opportunities for improvement
This is a good time to understand what new patterns and paradigms can be introduced with the design system. Ask the team: **what would we like to see more or less of in our product?**
**Some examples:**
* More or less of a particular motion
* More or less use icons and illustration
* More or less use of progressive disclosure
Screenshot existing examples and ask team to annotate what’s interesting or not working about them. Collect them in one place like this:
***
## 4️⃣ Outcome
After the discovery phase, you'll have a comprehensive understanding of the patterns and components across the product. There will also be a shared understanding on the potential direction the design system could take to support the product.
