Bias in Design Systems - bencallahan.com
Thoughtful analysis from Ben (as always).
The difference between correct-ness and useful-ness in a design system • Robin Rendle
I remember Lara telling me a great quote from the Clarity conference a few years back: “A design system needs to be correct before it’s complete.” In other words, it’s better to have one realistic component that’s actually in production than to have a pattern library full of beautiful but unimplemented components. I feel like Robin is getting at much the same point here, but he frames it in terms of correctness and usefulness:
If we want to be correct, okay, let’s have components of everything and an enormous Figma library of stuff we need to maintain. But if we want to be useful to designers who want to get an understanding of the system, let’s be brief.
Related links
What would HTML do? - The Cascade
Whenever I confront a design system problem, I ask myself this one question that guides the way: “What would HTML do?”
HTML is the ultimate composable language. With just a few elements shuffled together you can create wildly different interfaces. And that’s really where all the power from HTML comes up: everything has one job, does it really well (ideally), which makes the possible options almost infinite.
Design systems should hope for the same.
Responsive typography and its role in design systems | Clagnut by Richard Rutter
Okay, if you weren’t already excited for Patterns Day, get a load of what Rich is going to be talking about!
You’ve got your ticket, right?
Home | The Component Gallery
Here’s an aggregator of components from multiple design systems.
Pattern Wise, System Foolish
A library of UX components is one common part of a design system, but the system itself is something bigger. A good system is also a shared set of strategies for solving visual and interactive communication challenges, a playbook rather than a script.
I like this way of putting it:
The problem is that treating a design system as a pantry full of widgets is, in and of itself, a failure of both craft and imagination. Think of it like a language: if a writer’s only engagement with it is grabbing words from the dictionary and heaping them together until “message” is achieved, things are going to suck. Language is more than a bag of words.
Related posts
Composability in design systems
There’s probably a Pace Layer analogy in here somewhere.
Patterns Day video and audio
For your viewing and listening pleasure.
Patterns Day Two
Oh, what a Patterns Day that was!
The schedule for Patterns Day
What you can expect on Friday, June 28th, 2019 in the Duke of York’s cinema in Brighton.
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