Today's translation is completely for my mind, taking the time to separate myself from the book, and so on. Is that how the word detachment is used? It feels like a pia flying.
The original "The Minimum Viable Design System" compares the design system to "minimizing available products", emphasizing its never-ending, dynamic iterative nature; author Marcin Treder, CEO of the online prototyping tool UXPin, has written quite There are many articles on Design System, and I will share more with you when I have the opportunity. Enter the translation below.
I've talked about design systems at a few design meetups over the past few weeks; it's been a pleasure sharing, and I've learned a lot from the conversations that follow.
Among them, there is one question that I have been asked many times; this question is often raised within our team:
How long does it take to build a design system?
There is no right or wrong in the question itself, and I am happy to answer it. Each time, however, I felt a deeper problem arise: People still misunderstand the concept of "design system" and seem to still confuse it with traditional "design codes".
Zombie General Design Specifications
Once upon a time, some unfortunate employee on a design team or front-end development team was elected to document those team-proven designs, including color palettes, fonts, UI patterns, code snippets, and more.
Sound like a design system? True, but not really.
Traditional design specification development efforts aim to output a complete "finished product". However, each time, the "finished product" is out of date before it's actually finished, and ends up being a zombie-like half-dead existence.
What is the reason? Quite simply, the iteration speed of Internet products is too fast, and change is the norm. Designers try to document every rule, while at the same time the rules themselves are constantly changing and evolving. The event itself is like the myth of Sisyphus.
The challenges brought by this work caused the industry to rethink how to maintain the consistency of design and code in a more reasonable way, so the concept of "design system" appeared in front of us.
"Design System" is a dynamic process
Unlike design specifications that emphasize the output of finished products, the design system is more dynamic, that is, more about the process itself.
Compared with assigning a designer to create a static document, the "design system" requires us to plan a more reasonable workflow, aiming at the continuous optimization of the product experience, and organize the key information generated in the design work at any time. and maintenance.
What the design system team needs to focus on is not the delivery date of the "finished product", but how to consistently and incrementally improve the consistency of product design, and how to improve the efficiency of product iteration, so b2b data that it can become more and more quickly in the market Evolve and grow.
Restrain the rise in complexity with a reasonable process
Like any closed system, the entropy of digital products will continue to increase unless we exercise conscious control. Every new feature of the product, every new member of the team, every new management in the organizational structure... All these factors will eventually lead to an increase in product complexity, that is, an increase in entropy.
Only continuous planning and management can curb rising entropy. For the design system team, the key issue is not a standardized static output, but a continuous and rationalized workflow, how to coordinate all design, development, product and other related teams, aiming at the continuous improvement of product experience. Collaborative work.