It’s not a real design guide until somebody violates it are words I’ve said, and not just to make other creatives less grumpy. These words include a dose of painful experience and a measure of personal growth. I’ve learned that a system—brand, UX design, campaign, or otherwise—that isn’t built to adapt is a system that isn’t built to last. I want to work with people who are exploring ideas and challenging comfort zones, and those people can’t (or won’t) settle for tools and rules that move slower than they do.

I believe that design system violations are not just nefarious behavior. They’re possible signals of unmet need, and they need to be explored. The unmet need may be simple: the system is fine, but someone doesn’t have enough opportunities for unique content. The unmet need be more complex: the system doesn’t suit one or more important use cases. In both of these instances, the system can probably do more, and design leadership can definitely do more.

This is why I’ve steered design teams, and my own approach, to a model that transforms eventual violations into positive inputs and collaborative relationships. Strategy, research, and customer insights are shared. Wish lists, complaints, and challenges are requested, listened to, and incorporated into the system. From the Prime brand to Prime Day to the AWS marketing website to Alexa, the goal is not to outlaw non-expert executions and ideas—it’s to accommodate them. By doing this, we build the necessary trust to bring the best of those ideas into the system in a bar-raising way.