A lack of alignment and communication across teams
A diluted brand voice
A disjointed user experience
What do inconsistencies represent?
"A pattern library alone can’t create alignment across multiple product teams that are all working toward their own objectives."
The human aspects of our systems are more complicated than the tooling.
We should strive to support meaningful divergence
thing two
Are purpose built
Support a range of expression
Inspire use
Expressive design systems
Sign me up!
Unintentional
Intentional but not necessary
Intentional and meaningful
Types of divergence
Brand
Audience
Environment
Contexts for variation
Design principles matter
thing three
Like, really.
Our products won’t be aligned if we are all working from different ideas of “quality”.
Create alignment
Speed up decision making
Increase the quality of your team’s output
Well written design principles...
Example: Intercom - Designing conversations, not transactions
Expressive components and the design hierarchy
thing four
(sorry designers)
Basic components
Composite components
Containers
Containers
"Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context—a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan."
Big levers and small dials
thing five
Levers:broad sweeping decisions about how our experiences should feel
Dials:small, detailed choices that enable those feelings
Size
Primarily impacts the speed at which our content is consumed
Density and weight
Should the page feel airy, or compact?
Scale
Scale is used to focus attention.
Combined, our levers describe how we can express a brand.
5 things worth thinking about (that I read in this book)
