Design Systems, Oversimplified: The Standards (3 of 5)
This is a 5-part series to explain the who, what, when, where, and why about design systems in its most simplest form. Once you understand the nuts and bolts of a design system, you’ll appreciate its deeper nuances more and might even want to build your own.
The Oversimplified Standards
In the previous post, I stripped down a product development team to just the designers and developers. If you were ask me, “So what about the team member who only does research?” I’d simply reply (since this is an Oversimplification series), “That person is a UX designer specializing in user research.” All of the standards that designers and developers use to build and ship their product fall under six categories. I credit the inspiration of this simple breakdown to Audrey Hacq. It’s the simplest I’ve seen so far:
All standards of a design system fall under 1 of 6 categories: 1) Identity, 2) Principles, 3) Best Practices, 4) Components & Patterns, 5) Functional Documentation and 6) Technical Documentation.
“But what are the standards, specifically?!” you might be asking. Well, if I enumerated all the standards it would break the simple series model. Maddening, isn’t it? But I’ll give you a few. Colors and fonts would be under Identity. Accessibility is under Best Practices. The famous UI Library of a design system would fall under the Components and Patterns category. All of these standards create interaction models built on components, typography, tone, spacing, page layouts, etc., for the user to experience. Why are design systems important? I’m glad you asked. The next post explains why. A simple why.
