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Hey! After my first experience with design systems, I decided to kickstart a project called UI Playbook which is my attempt to document common UI components, t

Hey! After my first experience with design systems, I decided to kickstart a project called UI Playbook which is my attempt to document common UI components, their functionality, best practices, accessibility requirements, and examples. If at least one person finds this useful — it's a win!

masonhensley 6y ago
What's your general thought on adapting one of the bigger design systems with thousands of hours of improvement & polishing vs building one from scratch? I do think there is need for a common vernacular in these components, however I think that too often teams start from scratch when they could pull something off the shelf, and swap out some colors. List of corporate sponsored design systems: https://designsystemsrepo.com/design-systems/ https://designsystemsrepo.com/design-systems/
- corytheboyd 6y ago
  Agree with this comment. I think it is awesome that OP worked on a design system for the first time, that’s great experience to have, but it doesn’t warrant further diluting the market with another unfinished system.
  - RunawayGalaxy 6y ago
    It's not a design system. It's documentation/best practices around common UI components that you'd find in most design systems.
    - corytheboyd 6y ago
      Oh, then I guess I don’t see the point? Actual design systems vary quite a bit, refer to their documentation for their exact flavor of how to implement UI correctly and eliminate the middleman. I’m not saying having a general knowledge of the underlying tools is bad, that’s great knowledge to have, but it does already exist if you look for it.
      - folz 6y ago
        If I had to guess, the point is that OP enjoys learning about design systems and is trying to create a resource for other people to also learn from. Tons of knowledge already exists, but that doesn't stop people from trying to create or share new approaches to it anyway.
- d0liver 6y ago
  At some point you’re fighting against the design system more than you’re using it. It’s The same reason that I wouldn’t build a web app on WordPress. WP is great if what you want is a WordPress site. Otherwise, you’re just trying to shoe horn _your app_ into WordPress. Most of these things aren’t difficult to build and can be picked up a la carte and customized to whatever extent.
  - masonhensley 6y ago
    The depth & flexibility in many of these libraries is quite extraordinary. Totally agree with the Wordpress example, however, I'd argue that more products & applications should attempt to be build upon known primitives to reduce cognitive overload for both the building team and the end users.
miguelsm 6y ago
This reminds me of open-ui [1]. The goal of that project is also to tackle fragmentation and allow interoperability between component frameworks and design systems. How does UI Playbook compare to it? Do you think collaboration between the two projects would make sense? [1] https://open-ui.org https://open-ui.org

masonhensley 6y ago

What's your general thought on adapting one of the bigger design systems with thousands of hours of improvement & polishing vs building one from scratch? I do think there is need for a common vernacular in these components, however I think that too often teams start from scratch when they could pull something off the shelf, and swap out some colors. List of corporate sponsored design systems: https://designsystemsrepo.com/design-systems/ https://designsystemsrepo.com/design-systems/

corytheboyd 6y ago
Agree with this comment. I think it is awesome that OP worked on a design system for the first time, that’s great experience to have, but it doesn’t warrant further diluting the market with another unfinished system.
- RunawayGalaxy 6y ago
  It's not a design system. It's documentation/best practices around common UI components that you'd find in most design systems.
  - corytheboyd 6y ago
    Oh, then I guess I don’t see the point? Actual design systems vary quite a bit, refer to their documentation for their exact flavor of how to implement UI correctly and eliminate the middleman. I’m not saying having a general knowledge of the underlying tools is bad, that’s great knowledge to have, but it does already exist if you look for it.
    - folz 6y ago
      If I had to guess, the point is that OP enjoys learning about design systems and is trying to create a resource for other people to also learn from. Tons of knowledge already exists, but that doesn't stop people from trying to create or share new approaches to it anyway.
d0liver 6y ago
At some point you’re fighting against the design system more than you’re using it. It’s The same reason that I wouldn’t build a web app on WordPress. WP is great if what you want is a WordPress site. Otherwise, you’re just trying to shoe horn _your app_ into WordPress. Most of these things aren’t difficult to build and can be picked up a la carte and customized to whatever extent.
- masonhensley 6y ago
  The depth & flexibility in many of these libraries is quite extraordinary. Totally agree with the Wordpress example, however, I'd argue that more products & applications should attempt to be build upon known primitives to reduce cognitive overload for both the building team and the end users.

miguelsm 6y ago

This reminds me of open-ui [1]. The goal of that project is also to tackle fragmentation and allow interoperability between component frameworks and design systems. How does UI Playbook compare to it? Do you think collaboration between the two projects would make sense? [1] https://open-ui.org https://open-ui.org