📝 Articles
Purging Design System ‘rot’ from our checkboxes
Chuck discusses addressing design 'rot' by fixing accessibility issues in checkboxes and offers tips to prevent future occurrences. He emphasises the importance of regular reviews, maintaining high quality through empowerment, and leaving a clear documentation trail to ensure long-term system health.
How to archive your design system effectively
Kai Wong chews over the importance of preserving design decisions rather than visual components when archiving a design system. By documenting the reasoning behind design choices and maintaining a repository of this knowledge, teams can avoid duplicating efforts and ensure consistency when transitioning to a new design system.
👀 Interesting Reads
Button size styles
Donnie talks about a recent twitter debate around button size styles, weighing the use of padding versus minimum dimensions. They argue that padding should be the primary method for sizing buttons due to its ability to account for variations in text length and ensure consistent spacing. The author dismisses the use of line-height as an alternative, highlighting its drawbacks when text wraps to multiple lines. They also emphasise the importance of designing for mixed content, such as icons with text, and suggest thoughtful unit choices for spacing to enhance usability and maintain element relationships regardless of user settings.
The Other Side
Robin reflects on their transition from design systems to being a product designer, expressing frustration with rigid rules and a newfound appreciation for flexibility. They criticise their former strictness, recognising that some inconsistencies may be a result of flaws in the design system itself rather than designer errors, and now values a system that guides rather than dictates, even if it means occasionally breaking the rules for better product outcomes.
Free idea: design token ugly mode
Eric suggests creating a "design token ugly mode" to highlight inconsistencies in UI design by replacing all colour values with random, garish colours. This approach visually emphasises areas not integrated with design tokens, making technical debt and discrepancies clear and impossible to ignore, and could help prioritise modernisation efforts.
EGOS Methodology For Managing Design Systems
Mike outlines the EGOS methodology for managing design systems, emphasizing Efficiency, Guidance, Observability, and Synchronization. By focusing on these four pillars, teams can enhance organizational efficiency, provide leadership and best practices, continuously monitor and improve system performance, and ensure coordinated efforts across the organization.
The art of design system recipes
Brad explains that "recipes" are essential yet often misunderstood components of the design system ecosystem, acting as product-specific UI solutions separate from the core design system. These recipes allow product teams to innovate and create tailored experiences while maintaining the core system’s integrity.
Things I learned as a Guardian of Design System 🇵🇹
Lid Oliver shares key lessons from their experience, emphasising that design extends beyond aesthetics to functionality and accessibility. They highlight the importance of meticulous documentation, cross-disciplinary collaboration, adaptability, valuing feedback, and the dual learning that comes from teaching others about design systems.