What is Design System and What Can You Do with Design System?
Design systems have become part of most company's everyday work. Starting from discussions to creations, the systems have become core part of the life of designers. It is predicted that in the future, every product or brand will make use of design system. This is regardless of how the system is. As a designer, it is good to have deep understanding regarding the design system and how you can use it in your day to day work. Continue reading the article to understand more about best design systems and Wondershare Mockitt which is the best prototyping tool.
- Part 1: What is Design System and What Can You Do with Design System?
- Part 2: Top 5 Free Best Design Systems
- Part 3: The Best Tool for Prototyping
What is Design System and What Can You Do with Design System?
A design system refers to a wide collection of reusable components. These are the components that form the critical elements of your digital service or product. The system is the source of truth for the developing blocks of your design. These building blocks include components such as menus, form fields, patterns such as common page layouts, assets such as illustrations and foundations such as icons, grids and brand colors. Digital design system is a critical component for both small and large businesses.
However, they are not only collection of assets or components that are used to create a digital product. They are infinite pieces which can be repurposed as markets, strategies and trends evolve. A high quality design system requires high level consistency while maintaining meaning and structure. The core elements of the system is a library of UI components. These elements have their presentation implemented in code. The best design systems make it easy for the team when designing, developing and maintaining the quality of the product design.
The requirement for design system works hand in hand with the need for efficiency, scale and consistency in the product design. For instance, if your company has a product that has taken years to be built, there are high chances that the different teams working on the various parts of the product will create a lot of inconsistencies in the product with time. A digital design system helps to bring order and guides them to build solutions to all product problems. It helps bring more order by enhancing efficiency, consistency and scale. Efficiency allows for designers to reuse elements and boost efficiency. Consistency comes in because the design systems bring in a set of rules and principles to create the components. With the system, it becomes easier to build consistent experiences across various platforms. With consistency and efficiency, you can be able to create faster products at a great scale.
Top 5 Free Best Design Systems
Here are the major design system examples you find online.
1. Material design system by Google
This is a modern design language that was created in 2014. The design aims to develop a language for users that offer efficiency and modern together that is created through innovation of technology. It assists by unifying user experiences across all platforms and devices. The system is an open source code that allow for smooth collaboration between developers and designers.
It has a lot of sections such as style, motion, typography guidelines, layout, icon design and also allow for creation of dark material themes and many others. With the many layouts, styles, cool animations, depth effects, this design is created to have full exceptional branding themes. With this system, you are offered with the resources and tools required to create a more unified UI design.
2. Mialchimp design system
This is one of the best design systems for a more comprehensive company brand. It is liked by many designers because of its detailed system that is fully focused on a pattern library and pattern. Mialchimp has comprehensive guidelines for alert messages, colors, buttons and all other aspects of the marketing platform. The design offers guidelines with a myriad of explanations and examples that explains the most critical concepts. You also get marketing and email automation service. Mailchimp design system was available even before other systems came in. Most people like it because it is robust, user friendliness and simplicity. You also get a helpful content style guide.
3. Uber design
Uber has a design system that describes the company as a new and bold brand. Its design describes these two principles by covering the integrity of all the company visuals, composition, logo usage, color, motion and event photography. The design system usually revolves around beautiful simplicity and subtly recreation of the famous U when possible. The system acknowledges and leverages the company revolution into a single platform with a consistent, strong set of elements and allowing them to explore freely. One of the great things about this system is that it welcomes innovations without causing any form of disruption on the existing experiences that are familiar to many users.
The major goal of this design platform is to make every design system manager better when thinking of all things in terms of systems including accessibility, typography, grids, motion, language and many more. This makes it possible for all designers to work together, learn from a common source and share similar understanding of the quality of the product across the company.
4. Lightning by salesforce
Salesforce is a star found in a cloud based software including customer service, CRM, analytics, application development and marketing automation. The company showcases a well-documented and thorough design system known as Lightning that is an open source project that is fully focused on developing business apps on a wide range of platforms, UI patterns, UI components, accessibility, design tokens, utilities and many others. The system has a comprehensive and professional guide to components, design tokens, accessibility, utilities and more.
The design system has a way of keeping everything easy to access and unified for anyone who want to design on the platform. Instead of paying attention on pixels, it focuses on user experience, application logic, flows and interactions. You also find comprehensive design system examples and guidelines that cover not only design guidelines, but component blueprints and accessibility issues.
5. Atlassian design system
Atlassion is a software company based in Australia known for its popular tracking app, Jira. The company has a design system that gives description of how to use their fonts, logo, design elements, brand colors and others. The system also makes their brand personality to shine. With color names like Herky Jerky and Dragon's Blood, you can easily see why they give description of their style as optimistic, bold and practical.
The design system has a wide range of banners, icons, fonts, spinners, tabs, tables, tags, pagination and buttons. This makes the users have a unique experience. The design system is very comprehensive and has code components, design patterns and a rich library of User interface assets in Sketch. It is also easy for you to find the reason behind each of the choice made. This makes the system one of the most unique and best among the many you find online.
The Best Tool for Prototyping
As you create prototypes there are many factors you should put into consideration in order to create one that meets your goals and offer users the best experience. One of the most important things is to use the best prototyping tool. Wondershare Mockitt is the best tool you can use to create a prototype within a few minutes. The tool is a great option for most design system manager because of its rich features that allow for easy designing.
- Highly intuitive - Wondershare Mockitt is a well created tool that makes it easy to use. Even if you are a beginner, you will find the user interface easy to use to create any kind of design you want. It has unique artboard, inspector's placement and widget compared to other tools. It takes less time to navigate and is made with designers in mind.
- Onboarding feature - The tool allows for direct feedback from users. This means that when you create a design, it is possible for other people to give feedback and allow to make the right changes. The tool also has an onboarding feature that makes it easy to learn. It has quick step to step learning processes with helpful animations. Thus, it does not take a long time before you can learn how to use it effectively. Even without prior knowledge about the tool, it only takes you a short time to create a prototype.
- Rich widgets - Wondershare Mockitt allows for micro-interactions to come into play as you do the designing work. It enables you to create a design system that elevates the experience of the users. For instance, the tool has animations that make it easy for you to add then to the design to improve user experience. The predefined animations found in the platform make a major difference from just a mere prototype, to a high quality and exceptional one.
- Simplicity - The simplicity of the tool makes it stand out from most of the other design tools you will find online. Instead of multiplying the duplicated artboard, the tool changes the screen state on the same board, making it easy to design your prototype. It is also possible for you to customise the artboard to ensure that you create a design that meets your specific needs.
