Modular Design Systems

🪴 Design System Maturity Model (SVG) (https://lnkd.in/efJhPs2C), a neat little tool for design teams to evaluate a design system, where you are and where you want to be to create an actionable roadmap — with frequent areas to consider as strongly covered, partially covered, or not covered at all. Neatly put together by Farid Sabitov. When we work on a design system, we never start with a comprehensive list of UI components or design system features to work through. Instead, we explore areas which could significantly benefit from reuse and team alignment. Typically it’s quite similar but slightly different workflows. Never-ending design discussions about the “right” way to do something. Conversations about the right UI components to choose. Naming conventions. Do’s and don’ts for specific UI patterns. Defaults, presets, templates. We start with something along the lines of a “minimum valuable design system” — some alignment around our decisions that benefits our workflows, ways of working, stakeholders and user’s most frequent tasks in the product. It then trickles down into necessary UI components and UI flows to design and decide upon — with accessibility guides, design tokens, usage examples from our products, UI decision trees and (eventually) magical workarounds for legacy systems. One thing to keep in mind is that a good design system is the one that’s actually useful for your organization. It isn’t a checklist to tick off boxes from, and it doesn’t have to be incredibly robust or comprehensive. It must be useful, and reflect decisions made. Thanks to Farid for putting it all together, although personally I wouldn’t start with the UI kit, but rather a small, tiny library of frequent troubles and slowdowns that we decide upon and start reusing. But it’s an interesting conversation starter to align with your team. How does the model fit with the work you are currently doing in your design system? And what do you use to assess how efficient your design system work is? Leave your insights in the comments! -- ✤ Useful resources: Design System Worksheet PDF, by Nathan Curtis Article: https://lnkd.in/eTUusGcw PDF: https://lnkd.in/e4D5qjx3 Design System in 90 Days Canvas (FigJam template), by Dan Mall https://lnkd.in/eJRwNi4v Design System Canvas (PDF, FigJam), by Paavan Buddhdev https://lnkd.in/e8Tq9rJG #ux #DesignSystems

Ever wished you could just reuse the good parts of your app instead of rebuilding them from scratch every time? 🤔 Yeah, me too. 🧑💻 That’s exactly what led me to explore Bit and build a completely composable Todo app, where every piece, from the UI to the #GrpahQL server, is an independent, versioned, and reusable component. 💜 👉 I just shared the full breakdown here: https://lnkd.in/eW6MAVeC Why does composable architecture matter so much today? Because it lets you: 🔅Ship faster without being stuck in huge, messy codebases. 🔅Reuse your own components across ANY project. 🔅Update a feature once, and have it reflect everywhere it’s used. 🔅Collaborate with your team without stepping on each other’s toes. 💟 Build real micro-frontends (the easy way) or scale modular monoliths neatly. 🤯 Bit makes it ridiculously easy to create, version, share, and evolve components independently. You get full dev environments for each component (hello isolated testing 👋), visual dependency graphs, and painless exports to any app. 🔥 In my blog, Shown a working Todo app where: ✅ Hooks, UI components, and the backend server are all separate components. ✅Every component can be installed in any other app or improved independently. ✅Changes to one piece trigger auto-detection of what else needs updating. If you're curious about how to stop copy-pasting code forever and start working smarter, check it out 👉 https://lnkd.in/eW6MAVeC #SoftwareDevelopment #ComposableArchitecture #WebDev #Bit #Frontend #MicroFrontends #DeveloperExperience

💡Design System Metrics Design system brings two main benefits: Consistency and Efficiency. It helps minimize usability issues and maintain design consistency. However, without metrics, it can be hard to tell how well the system performs. That’s why it’s recommended to define metrics up front when establishing a foundation for your design system. Here are some popular design system metrics: Product design process: ✔ Adoption rate. What % of products use the design system? The more the design system is used, the more time is saved. ✔ Average task completion time. The time designers spend on completing the task (for example, designing a new user flow). Compare before/after the design system. ✔ Design to development time. Design system should speed up the handoff process from designers to developers. ✔ Component usage. The number of components used across products vs the total number of components available in the design system. Compare the usage of components in design (Figma) and code (Github). This will help you identify unused components.  ✔ Effect on code. Measure code complexity and how much code developers change with each release. ✔ Number of component detachments (Figma). If some components are often detached, you won’t have the right picture of how effective the design system is. Design output quality: ✔ User interface design consistency. # of visual inconsistencies in a final design.  ✔ Error rates and usability issues. Whether the design system reduces error rates and usability issues. ✔ Design documentation state. % of outdated docs. Outdated docs increase the risk of releasing inconsistent design. ✔ Accessibility score. How the design system improves accessibility (e.g., WCAG score) Business: ✔ Return on Investment (ROI). ROI is a key metric that stakeholders analyze to understand if the investment in DS is paying off. ✔ Team satisfaction score. How do team members feel about the design system? Collect feedback to understand what problems team members face using a design system. ✔ Tech debt. After having the design system in place, there should be less tech debt. ✔ Average time to market. The time the product team spends on releasing a new feature/scenario. Compare before/after the DS. ✔ Company scalability. How does workload capacity change after having the design system? ✔ Brand consistency. There should be less work required to fix visual differences because the design system drives repeat usage. 📖 Guides and tools: ✔ Measuring DS success (by Nathan Curtis) https://lnkd.in/gA25QK73 ✔ Measuring the impact of a design system (by Cristiano Rastelli)  https://lnkd.in/dx5YMWta ✔ Design system metrics collection, checklist for Figma (by Romina Kavcic)  https://lnkd.in/gAeN_sfk 🖼 Design system adoption by Stylebit #designsystem #designsystems

One thing that improved my UI/UX work instantly: Designing with components, not designing every screen from scratch. And it changed everything about how I approach a product. Before, every new screen felt like starting over. New button here. Different spacing there. Hover states I forgot to define until a developer asked. It was exhausting and the inconsistency showed. The shift happened when I stopped designing screens and started designing systems. Buttons, inputs, cards, nav patterns. Every state accounted for: hover, active, disabled, error. Spacing and typography resolved once, inherited everywhere. Not because it looked better in the file. Because it felt better in the product. ✅ Here’s what nobody tells you about components: They’re not a shortcut. They’re a design decision made once, so it doesn’t get reinvented differently on every new screen. When your components are solid, every screen that follows gets designed faster and more consistent, ✔️ Your layouts feel cohesive without forcing it. ✔️ Your handoffs stop generating a thread of follow-up questions. ✔️ And your product can grow without falling apart visually. A clean interface is rarely accidental. It’s the result of someone who built the foundation before anyone asked for it, before the sprints got hectic, before the product had 200 screens pulling in different directions. Build the system before you need it. #UIUX #UIDesign #UXDesign #DesignSystems #Figma

“Where am I?” As our design system matures, things move around. We’re trying to invest in ways that allow feature designers and engineers to locate where they are within a design system, and where to find what they need. → Multiple design libraries can be hard to track and become confusing when designers and engineers aren’t aware of what does and doesn’t exist in each library. → Every component and pattern has a varying degree of specificity from generic to a specific business context or content pattern and deciding what goes where is confusing. → Theming in Figma is great, but... the current nature of variables can make managing multiple modes across multiple brands challenging. Here’s how we’ve been trying to get our head around reducing complexity for our team and consumers 🏗 Figma file architecture - Having a clear plan for structuring your design system libraries is critical for folks to find stuff. Our early attempts at a highly modular system with numerous smaller libraries were too unwieldy. We’ve landed into a Tokens, Components, Patterns, and Features structure that streamlines the process for everyone. It was super cool to stumble on these Figma docs that deep dive into various strategies for organizing your files https://lnkd.in/dGyN-SQw 🚦 Wayfinding elements - Once designers and engineers are in the files themselves, it's still easy to get lost. We’ve implemented consistent color-coded “file covers” distinguishing design system files from feature files, “getting started” pages outlining file dependencies, and consistent page naming conventions indicating iterations from elements that are ready for development. Thanks to Vitaly Friedman for the reference to Saurav Rastogi's post on Figma file organization which is packed with insights. https://lnkd.in/giBs_Jgn 🎨 Multi-brand variables - Our team has worked hard to figure out the most intuitive way to allow for white-labeling our design system for custom theming. We currently leverage modes at multiple layers of the design system based on their specificity from global to semantic to component to pattern. Romina Kavcic has endless resources for teams who are looking to build out their token strategy. https://lnkd.in/deiMGCe9 💎 Wayfinding within design systems is hard but a couple of things that help folks understand where they are and what they can do → Partner with engineers on an architecture that maps somewhat to their mental model making things more intuitive → Setup wayfinding documentation within your Figma files that orient users to where they are within the system → Map your tokens and variables across your system so that it is clear how to layer modes to achieve custom themes #designsystems #figma #uidesign #tokens #components #patterns

LWC Advanced Patterns Cheat Sheet — Building Enterprise-Grade Lightning Web Components Learning basic LWC syntax is easy. Building scalable, maintainable, enterprise-ready component architecture is the real challenge. I created this LWC Advanced Patterns Cheat Sheet to help developers understand the patterns used in large Salesforce applications. Inside this sheet: ⚡ Component Architecture Patterns ⚡ State Management ⚡ Parent ↔ Child Communication ⚡ LMS & Pub/Sub Patterns ⚡ Advanced Data Handling ⚡ Performance Optimization ⚡ Reusability Strategies ⚡ Error Handling Patterns ⚡ Security Best Practices ⚡ Lifecycle Hook Usage ⚡ Apex Integration Patterns ⚡ Testing & Packaging Strategies One thing I learned working on enterprise LWC systems: Most frontend complexity comes from architecture, not UI. Common problems: ❌ huge components ❌ tightly coupled logic ❌ excessive rerendering ❌ over-fetching data ❌ duplicated code ❌ poor state management ❌ weak error handling Strong LWC architecture focuses on: ✔ reusable components ✔ separation of concerns ✔ small focused modules ✔ efficient rendering ✔ scalable communication patterns ✔ centralized utilities ✔ maintainable state management A few principles I strongly follow: 👉 Keep components small & composable 👉 Data down, events up 👉 Reuse logic, not copy logic 👉 Optimize rendering early 👉 Handle errors gracefully everywhere One of the biggest mindset shifts: LWC is not “Salesforce frontend”. It’s modern component engineering inside Salesforce. Advanced LWC becomes extremely powerful when combined with: • Apex services • Flow integration • Lightning Message Service • GraphQL APIs • Platform Events • Experience Cloud • AI-powered interfaces Good LWC architecture improves: ✔ maintainability ✔ performance ✔ developer productivity ✔ scalability ✔ user experience ✔ deployment confidence And honestly, frontend engineering quality becomes very visible at enterprise scale. If you’re preparing for: • Salesforce Developer interviews • Enterprise LWC projects • Architect discussions • Experience Cloud implementations • Modern Salesforce UI systems …save this post. Advanced LWC patterns separate beginner developers from strong frontend engineers. 💙 What should I create next? 👇 Enterprise Integration Hub | Salesforce Event-Driven Systems | AI Copilot Architecture | Experience Cloud Architecture | Salesforce Mobile Architecture | Apex Enterprise Patterns #Salesforce #LWC #LightningWebComponents #SalesforceDeveloper #FrontendDevelopment #CRM #JavaScript #SoftwareEngineering #CloudComputing #Developer #Tech #SalesforceArchitect #UIEngineering #SystemDesign #Programming #EnterpriseArchitecture #ExperienceCloud #WebDevelopment #TechCommunity #avnishyadav25

Design systems codebases need audits, too. Here's a sneak peek at a new tool I've been working on. It's called DSAudit, and it's like Lighthouse, but for your design system's codebase. In our efforts to ensure design system completeness, from tokens to components to documentation, we've been kinda flying blind for a while now. Tools like Storybook help visualize. Linters help catch syntax. But there hasn't been a smart, opinionated tool that evaluates the entire design system holistically. Until now. DSAudit is a local Node-based auditing tool that inspects a full monorepo-based design system and returns: → A health score (modeled after Lighthouse) → Actionable insights across architecture, tokens, accessibility, coverage, and consistency → A full recommendations table → Component-level diagnostics → AI-powered, context-aware chat powered by Claude + MCP knowledge base behind Design Systems Assistant (https://lnkd.in/g2Ugkqp8) If you've used FigmaLint (https://lnkd.in/gDv3FMG3), you know I'm serious about audit tooling. That plugin helps validate your designs before they go to development and helps determine AI readiness. DSAudit picks up where FigmaLint leaves off, ensuring your codebase is production-ready, scalable, and aligned with your design system standards. → Currently built for single-repo design systems → Will support multi-repo ecosystems in a future release → Claude chat is scoped to your codebase + the design systems MCP I built, not just generic LLM info I'm not releasing it just yet. Still working out bugs and validating it across different codebases. But I wanted to post a quick video demo to get some early feedback. Would love to know: • Is this something your team would use? • Would it help your workflow? • Anything missing you’d want to see? Thanks for taking a look. I'm excited about where this is headed! #designsystems #ai

One of the common interview questions in system design rounds is how to build reusable UI components that can work across frameworks. And, this is where 𝗪𝗲𝗯 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 come into picture. 𝗪𝗲𝗯 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 are a set of browser native APIs that allow us to create custom, reusable HTML elements without relying on frameworks. 𝗪𝗲𝗯 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 are made of 4 main specifications: 𝟭. 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺 𝗘𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 This is how we define our own tags like <𝙪𝙨𝙚𝙧-𝙢𝙤𝙙𝙚𝙡>. We can manage the logic using lifecycle callbacks: • 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸: This is called when component is inserted in DOM. • 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸: This is called when component is removed from DOM. • 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗱𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸: This is called when a prop or attribute is changed/ added/ removed from DOM. 𝟮. 𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗱𝗼𝘄 𝗗𝗢𝗠 This gives us a private, scoped DOM tree. We use it so our CSS doesn't leak and break the rest of the app layout, and global styles do not affect our internal component structure. 𝟯. 𝗛𝗧𝗠𝗟 𝗧𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 We can use the <template> tag to define HTML that doesn't render immediately. 𝟰. 𝗘𝗦 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗹𝗲𝘀 This is a standard way in which we can package and share our components across different projects. 𝗘𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲: If you open YouTube and try to inspect, you can find multiple custom elements inside DOM.

Most people think speed comes from "shiny" tools. But after 100+ hours building projects that scale... Here's what I noticed: Your speed comes from your patterns, not just the tools you use. That's why I rely on reusable components Here’s the 7 step process I use to create reusable components for scalable React projects: 1. Spot patterns in your UI ↳ Look for repeated layouts, similar buttons, or recurring structures. If you’ve copied the same JSX more than once, that’s your first clue. 2. Extract one piece and create a component ↳ Don’t move the whole page. Start small. Take one repeated block and make it a standalone component. Remember: one job per component only. 3. Name it descriptively ↳ A name should instantly tell you what it does: ProductCard, UserForm, UserBadge. Clear names = faster collaboration. 4. Copy the JSX to reuse into the component ↳ Don’t over-engineer it at first. Just move your existing JSX into a function. You can always refine later, but start by getting it out of the page. 5. Define props value, pass as argument ↳ Props make your components dynamic. Instead of hardcoding data, pass values as arguments so the component adapts to different use cases. 6. Customize with props inside JSX ↳ Use props to control text, images, styles, or actions. That’s how one component can serve multiple purposes while staying clean and flexible. 7. Import and reuse across your app. ↳ This is where the payoff comes in: instead of rewriting code, just import and reuse. Mastering reusability for me meant less rewriting, cleaner, more maintainable code & faster development. Because speed in frontend isn't just about the tools you use but how you use them. P.S. What’s tool/ concept do you use to speed up your work process?

In active design systems, only around 60% of components get reused—but it’s not because the components are bad. It’s because most teams have no operational path to use them. Here’s what I see over and over: → Figma file? Gorgeous. → Tokens? Impeccable. → Documentation? Thorough. → Real-world adoption? In the crapper. Because systems answer “what exists” but not “when to use it” or “why it matters.” Here’s what actually drives reuse—layer by layer… Layer 1: Foundation → Semantic tokens bridge design intent to implementation → Storybook can isolate components for real-world testing → Implementation constraints shape culture, not taste Layer 2: Design-Code Parity → Prioritize shared naming across Figma and code → Sync the tokens (e.g. Tokens Studio to GitHub) → Continuous integration tools (e.g. Code Connect) → Eliminate drift to build trust Layer 3: Decision Infrastructure → Decision trees (use A or B?) → Documentation for edge cases → Principles embedded in components, not trapped in Notion → Reduce decisions, don’t multiply them Layer 4: Governance → Open-source model (i.e. public discussions preceding codified changes) → Tracked requests, clear ownership, documented decisions → Builds psychological safety and reliability Layer 5: People & Culture → Launch pilots, not full libraries → Secure executive sponsors (outside design) → Role-specific onboarding → Embed advocates in product teams Reuse doesn’t happen by default. It’s architected. Here’s the proof: ✓ 38% efficiency boost (via Figma) ✓ IBM: 301% ROI from structured design (via Forrester) ✓ Headspace: 50% faster on complex projects ✓ 79% of successful orgs now have DS teams (via zeroheight) What’s holding component reuse back on your team?🤔 #designsystems #uxdesign #productdesign #designops #opentowork ⸻ 👋🏼 Hi, I’m Dane—your source for UX and career tips. ❤️ Was this helpful? A 👍🏼 would be thuper kewl. 🔄 Share to help others (or for easy access later). ➕ Follow for more like this in your feed every day.