Patterns Day 2019 - Emil Björklund
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Meandering towards Design Systems
In the last talk of the day, Emil discusses how the industry moved towards Design Systems
- CSS Systems for writing maintainable CSS by Natalie Downe
- We have things we build - style guides, pattern libraries - and previously Design System seemed something that we built.
- To most they can still mean style guides and pattern libraries.
- We can all, in this room, agree that they more complex than “How to build a design system in React?”
- Donella Meadows - systems thinking — “A set of related components that work together in a particular environment to perform whatever functions are required to achieve the systems’ objective.”
- “Dividing a cow in half does not give you two smaller cows” - Draper L. Kauffman Jr. “Systems one: An introduction to Systems Thinking”.
- When we start to think of the system as a process, not a group of components we could say that every company has a Design System.
- A Design System is never done but always moving to becoming.
- Every organisation has a design system - either it’s delivered or accidental.
- “Meta-design is much more difficult than design; it’s easier to draw something than to explain how to draw it” - Donald Knuth.
- A Design Language is not about how it communicates with end-users, but the people that use the Design System.
- Boundary Objects - people collaborate around objects.
- Boundary Objects - need to exist outside your head
Types of Boundary Objects:
- coincidental boundary - maps, shaded work surfaces
- repository - code repos, databases
- form - data formats, specimen collection sheets
- ideal type - design pattern
“Can we make sure a product still feels cohesive and sole, even when many people work on it? Yes, if we have a shared understanding” - Alla Kholmatova
