I’m a HODLer of cryptocurrency but after 4 years of regular reading and even being directly involved in the application of one, I still regularly feel like I don’t understand what’s going on. The space is moving so fast and in so many directions that it’s hard to keep up and even harder to find an entry-level foothold.
I want to be involved and participate because cryptocurrency is such a unique and exciting development in my lifetime but if you are reading this it’s likely you discovered what I did: the learning curve is steep and unforgiving. …
What is a good design system? Depending on who you ask, it can mean different things. Good for who? In what way is it good? How do I measure its goodness? I think this is normally where someone peeks in and yells: “You need values!”. But here’s the thing: I never found it helpful to refer to a set of broad or obvious buzz words like “Simple, Valuable, and Clear”.
When faced with a difficult choice while designing, broad adjectives aren’t helpful. “Simple” can mean drastically different things depending on the person and the product.
Creating effective documentation is a really important part of a design system. The key word there is effective. My experience with design system documentation is that there is rarely a shortage of information. Helping people understand how to use the system by presenting it in an organized and succinct fashion is the hard part.
Leading design systems at Blend. Previously @zendesk, @brave and lots of other tiny endeavors.