Initiating the development of new projects can be tedious and lengthy. But with design-ready UI components, the software design and development process can be improved and made faster and easier. These user interface components can be reused across different projects, reducing the need for designers and developers to create everything from scratch every time. This blog describes a journey that inspired the concept of design-ready user interface components.
Problem 1 – How to reuse components across projects?
Being part of a service-based organization, we are engaged in different projects for various clients. Therefore, creating reusable components for projects is a standard we follow. Despite adhering to these standards, we observed that teams working on multiple projects were developing components identical or very similar to those developed by other teams. Additionally, there was no way for us to use these existing components that other teams had already created. We identified this as a challenge and started looking for ways to repurpose these already-existing components so that we could speed up the development process and shorten the release cycles.
Following extensive brainstorming and discussions, the concept of a UI design component library emerged – a library that would include reusable components from various projects. Teams from across the organization could contribute to this library and use components added by other teams.
Problem 2 – How to improve design integration?
Another problem that awaited us was creating and maintaining a UI design component library, particularly one that featured components from several technologies provided by different teams. These components were originally created for different projects, so they had different themes, icons, typefaces, and other design elements.
Our UX team came to the rescue and introduced the concept of using a design system to address the issue of how to design better UI components and how these components would look and feel. This design system would be based on some guidelines that would be followed for the development of the component library.
The opportunity presented by the solutions to problems 1 and 2
Although having a design system component library aided the rapid development of ongoing and current projects, we still needed the resources to support new initiatives. Together, they made it possible to create a UI starter kit that would give us a head start when designing and developing new applications. Let’s learn more about what a UI starter kit is.
UI (User Interface) starter kit
A UI starter kit with a design system component library is a collection of pre-designed user interface elements and components organized and structured according to a specific design system. It can be used to quickly create a consistent and professional-looking user interface for a project. Starter kits often include a variety of distinctive styles and layouts and may also include code snippets or templates that make implementing the components in a specific programming language or framework easier.
With these kits, teams can construct, update, or build upon the current components without having to create them from scratch, helping save time and effort and ensuring design consistency.
Design System
A design system is a set of guidelines and principles that defines the visual and interactive elements of a user interface. It includes a consistent color palette, typography, spacing, and other design elements used across different pages and components of a project. Using a design system can ensure that the visual elements and components are consistent, improving the overall user experience and managing the design at scale using reusable components and patterns.
Why use a design system?
- Save significant time by reusing elements quickly and at scale
- Set a unified language within and across cross-functional teams
- Define visual appearance and experience consistency across products and channels
Component library
A UI design component library is a collection of pre-built, reusable UI components that can be easily added to a project. These components are often built using a specific technology and include elements like buttons, forms, navigation menus, and other common UI elements.
Nowadays, a few open-source toolchains have enabled an ecosystem where one can build components from many technologies, including Angular, React, Node.js, and others. It also facilitates creating and hosting the components as a unified library. Using it, teams can gradually refactor the UI and add more reusable components to their arsenal.
Here we can see how components from both Angular and React are hosted in one library.
Benefits of using the UI starter kit
- Consistency: Visual elements and components used are consistent, improving the overall user experience
- Faster development: Speeds up the development process, as some work is already done.
- Flexibility: Reusable components across different pages or projects increase the flexibility of the design.
- Scalability: With design elements and components already established and consistent, it gets easier to scale a project as it grows.
- Better collaboration: It enhances collaboration between designers, developers, and other team members, clearly defining the visual elements and components that should be used across the project.
- Better communication: It also helps better communicate with the client, providing a visual reference of the design and development process.
- Improve maintainability: Maintaining and updating the project over time is easier, as some elements and components are already defined and organized.
Conclusion
By using components from the library, developers can focus on functionality and logic rather than spending time developing a component. For example, developing a new component may require two days of POC (Proof of Concept) and three days of development, whereas if that component is already part of the component library, consuming it will only take half a day to a full day at most. Additionally, the component can be upgraded/updated on feedback from the clients or developers. And with this approach, components continue to develop over time.
Nous Infosystems offers UI services with deep expertise in digital experience design and UI engineering and development. Learn how Nous’ UI Starter Kit enables you to save time and effort, enabling faster development and deployment.
