It all started at Patterns Day…
(Note: you’ll probably need to use Reader mode to avoid taxing your eyes reading this—the colour contrast …doesn’t.)
- People only understand things relative to things they already understand
- People only understand things in context
- People rely on patterns and consistency
- People seek to minimize cognitive load
- People have varying levels of expertise and familiarity
- People are goal-oriented
- People often don’t know what they’re looking for
- Information is more useful when it’s actionable
Whenever I confront a design system problem, I ask myself this one question that guides the way: “What would HTML do?”
HTML is the ultimate composable language. With just a few elements shuffled together you can create wildly different interfaces. And that’s really where all the power from HTML comes up: everything has one job, does it really well (ideally), which makes the possible options almost infinite.
Design systems should hope for the same.
Lovely photos by Marc from Patterns Day!
Trys threads the themes of Patterns Day together:
Jeremy did a top job of combining big picture and nitty-gritty talks into the packed schedule.
A nice write-up of Patterns Day from Hidde.
There’s probably a Pace Layer analogy in here somewhere.
It’s all about the people.
Eight talks on design systems in one fun day.
The Patterns Day conference, the workshop the day after, and an Indie Web Camp on the weekend.
Eight fantastic speakers, and one unmissable full-day workshop with Vitaly Friedman.