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Examples of Prototypes – From Low-Fidelity to High-Fidelity Prototypes

Mastering the art of prototyping is akin to wielding a powerful toolset that empowers designers and developers to iterate, refine, and ultimately deliver products that resonate deeply with their audience.

In this article, we embark on a journey through the spectrum of prototype fidelity, from low-fi sketches to high-fi interactive simulations. Each step of the way, we’ll unravel prototype examples that illuminate the nuances and possibilities inherent in each approach. Whether you’re a seasoned UX designer seeking inspiration or a newcomer eager to grasp the fundamentals, this exploration promises insights aplenty.

But before we dive in, allow me to introduce you to UXPin—a comprehensive prototyping platform that empowers designers to bring their visions to life with unparalleled ease and efficiency. By seamlessly integrating design and prototyping capabilities, UXPin streamlines your workflow, enabling you to iterate rapidly and collaborate seamlessly. Ready to elevate your prototyping game? Sign up for a trial today.

What is a prototype?

A prototype is a preliminary version or model of a new product, system, or design that is developed to test and validate concepts, features, or functionality before proceeding with full-scale production or implementation.

Prototypes are used in various industries, including product design, software development, engineering, and manufacturing, to gather feedback, identify potential issues, and refine designs early in the development process.

Prototypes are created for several reasons, all aimed at improving the final product or system. Here are some key reasons why prototypes are created:

To Validate Product Idea: Prototypes allow designers and developers to validate concepts and ideas early in the development process. By creating a prototype, they can test assumptions, explore different design options, and gather feedback from stakeholders before investing time and resources into full-scale development.
To Clarify Requirements: Prototypes help clarify requirements by providing a tangible representation of the product or system. They enable stakeholders to visualize and interact with the user interface design, facilitating discussions and ensuring that everyone has a shared understanding of the project goals and expectations.
To Identify Issues: Prototypes help identify potential issues and challenges before they become more costly to address later in the development process. By testing prototypes with users or stakeholders, designers can uncover usability problems, technical limitations, and design flaws early on and make necessary adjustments.
To Explore Solutions: Prototypes allow designers to explore different solutions and design alternatives. By creating multiple prototypes, designers can compare different approaches, evaluate trade-offs, and determine the most effective design direction for the final product.
To Gather Feedback: Prototypes serve as a tool for gathering feedback from real users, customers, and other stakeholders. By testing prototypes with target users, designers can gather valuable insights, preferences, and suggestions for improvement, which can inform subsequent iterations of the design.
To Reduce Risk: Prototyping helps mitigate risks associated with the development process by allowing designers to experiment with ideas in a low-risk environment. By identifying and addressing potential issues early on, prototypes help reduce the likelihood of costly mistakes and delays during later stages of development.
To Improve Communication: Prototypes serve as a communication tool for conveying ideas, concepts, and design decisions to potential investors. They provide a common visual reference point for discussions and facilitate collaboration among team members, ensuring that everyone is aligned and working towards the same goals.

Read about prototype definition and types in this article: What is a Prototype?

Types of prototypes

Types of prototypes include:

Paper Prototypes: These are low-fidelity prototypes created using paper, sketches, or mockups to visualize the layout, structure, and flow of a design. Paper prototypes are inexpensive and quick to create, making them ideal for early-stage concept testing and brainstorming sessions.
Wireframes: They are basic, skeletal representations of a design or interface, typically created using wireframing tools. They focus on layout and functionality, omitting detailed design elements such as colors and graphics. Wireframes help designers and stakeholders visualize the structure and interaction flow of a design.
Digital Prototypes: They are interactive representations of a design or product created using prototyping tools. These prototypes can range from low-fidelity mockups to high-fidelity simulations, depending on the level of detail and realism required. Digital prototypes allow for user testing, usability evaluation, and iteration before product development.
Functional Prototypes: Functional prototypes are fully or partially functional versions of a product or system that demonstrate key features and capabilities. These prototypes often involve interactivity to replicate the behavior of the final product. Functional prototypes are used to validate technical feasibility, performance, and user experience.
Proof-of-Concept Prototypes: Those are experimental models created to demonstrate the feasibility of a new idea, technology, or approach. These prototypes focus on validating core concepts and principles, often with limited functionality or polish. Proof-of-concept prototypes are used to assess the viability of an idea before investing further resources in development.
Throwaway Prototypes: Throwaway prototypes, also known as disposable or rapid prototypes, are quick and rough prototypes created with the intention of being discarded after use. These prototypes are often built using tools and are not intended to represent the final product accurately. Instead, they are used to explore ideas, experiment with design concepts, and gather feedback early in the development process. Throwaway prototypes are valuable for generating new ideas, iterating rapidly, and validating design decisions without investing significant time or resources.
Workable Prototypes: Those prototypes are working models of a user interface. Unlike throwaway prototypes, workable prototypes are more polished and refined, aiming to closely resemble the final product in terms of functionality and performance. These prototypes may involve the use of actual components, hardware, or software code to simulate the behavior of the final product accurately. Workable prototypes are used to validate technical feasibility, test usability, and gather user feedback in real-world scenarios. They serve as a crucial step in the product development process, helping to identify and address potential issues before proceeding to full-scale production or implementation.

Prototype examples you need to see

Example 1: Paper prototype

Paper prototypes are are low-fidelity representations of user interfaces created using pen and paper. They are simple sketches of user interfaces that include rough sketches of UI elements such as buttons and tabs while every new paper piece shows a simulation of next steps of a user flow. They are great communication devices during brainstorming or talking with stakeholders.

Here is an example of a mobile app paper prototype by Aaron Barko found on Medium.

Notice that the prototype has a cut-out an iPhone and the designer can move it to indicate next step. Its kept in a black-and-white color scheme and all UX writing is written by hand. The designer prepared a smaller pieces of paper to indicate different options in a drop-down menu.

To create a paper prototype, prepare sketching materials such as pens or pencils for drawing your interface elements. Your pens may be of different thicknesses to represent different types of UI elements (e.g., thick lines for buttons, thin lines for text). You may want to have different sizes of paper depending on the complexity of your prototype and the level of detail you want to include.

Your paper prototype doesn’t have to be black and white. You can use markers or highlighters for adding emphasis to certain elements or highlighting important areas of your prototype.

Example 2: Wireframe

A wireframe is a simplified visual representation of a digital interface or product. It outlines the basic structure, layout, and functionality of the interface without getting into detailed design elements like colors, images, or typography. Wireframes are typically created using basic shapes, lines, and text to convey the placement of elements and the flow of information.

The focus is on capturing the overall layout and structure of the interface, as well as the interactions and navigation paths that users will follow. Designers usually use digital tools to make wireframes, such as UXPin, Figma or Balsamiq.

Here’s an example of a website wireframe in Balsamiq.

You can see that its a low-fidelity representation of a real-life website. There’s a frame for asset, some placeholder text, but overall, details don’t matter. It’s still early in the design process to be able to tell how the UI will look like beside the structure and layout.

Before diving into this type of prototyping, it’s helpful to have a clear understanding of the user flows and basic layout of your user interface. User flows map out the paths that users will take through the interface, while wireframes provide a simplified visual representation of the interface structure.

Example 3: Mockup

A mockup is a higher-fidelity representation of a digital interface or product compared to a wireframe or a paper prototype. While wireframes and paper prototypes focus on the basic structure and layout of the interface, mockups add more visual detail, including colors, typography, images, and other design elements.

Here is a design mockup found on Dribbble, a website where digital designers share static mockups, video prototypes, and graphic designs to showcase their understanding of design or prototyping process.

mockup prototype example — Source: Tran Mau Tri Tam

Notice that this mockup provides a more detailed representation of the final look and feel of the interface. They incorporate colors, typography, images, and other visual elements to showcase the visual style and branding of the project. They include realistic visual elements and often simulate the appearance of the final product as closely as possible.

Mockups still focus on visual design rather than functionality what makes them great for gathering feedback on the visual design and aesthetics of the interface. They are often shared with stakeholders, clients, or team members for review and approval before moving on to the prototype development phase.

Example 4: High-fidelity prototype

High-fidelity prototype can be in the form of a static mockup or functional prototype. What matters here is the level of detail. They serve as powerful communication and validation tools in the design process, allowing designers to convey their design concepts effectively and gather feedback on the user experience before moving into the product development phase.

High-fidelity prototypes closely mimic the visual appearance of the final product, including detailed graphics, typography, colors, and branding elements. They often use actual assets such as images, icons, and logos to provide a realistic representation of the interface.

One example of a high-fidelity prototype is this website made by UXPin.

You can see that it has a well-defined color palette, carefully picked font pairing, great use of whitespace and clickable form. You can use this prototype as a template for practicing UX design, add a FAQ section, new sites, and more. Try it now by signing up for UXPin trial.

Example 5: Functional prototype

A functional prototype is a type of prototype that not only demonstrates the visual design of an interface but also simulates its functionality and behavior. Unlike static prototypes, which focus solely on the appearance of the design, functional prototypes provide a tangible representation of how the final product will work and behave.

Functional prototypes help validate the technical feasibility of the design by demonstrating how different components and features work together in a functioning system. They can identify technical issues, bottlenecks, or limitations early in the development process.

Similarly, startups may build functional prototypes to get buy-in from investors. It works similarly to a 3D model of a physical product as other people can get a feeling of what you want to build and how it will behave like. Some people need physical models to spark their imagination.

Those prototypes include interactive elements that simulate user interactions and behaviors. This may include clickable buttons, input fields, dropdown menus, and other interactive components that allow users to navigate through the prototype and perform tasks.

In some cases, functional prototypes may include real data or content to provide a more realistic user experience. This could involve integrating dynamic content feeds, sample data sets, or actual text and imagery that would be used in the final product.

Here is an example of a functional prototype by UXPin. It’s an auction app.

It’s fully clickable and it looks like a final product that has been developed by engineers. But it’s not. It’s a functional prototype. You can use it as if you use a regular app that’s on your phone. It’s responsive to user action and it transfers data from one step to the other. Such an app is possible to build in UXPin.

Example 6: Coded prototype

The final prototype example we want to show you is coded prototype. This prototype isn’t build in code by a developer. It’s build in a designer’s environment with coded components – a small building blocks of most apps. UXPin, unlike most design tools, renders real code, so there is always code in the background that you can hand over to development.

The example here is a sign-up flow build with UXPin. Here’s a full tutorial on how to build a sign-up form like this one.

If you want to learn coded prototyping, follow our mini-course on using UXPin Merge.

Create code-first prototype with UXPin

Those prototype examples demonstrate versatility and applicability across various design contexts, including paper prototypes, wireframes, mockups, and functional prototypes. Each type of prototype serves a specific purpose in the design process, helping designers to effectively communicate ideas, test functionality, and refine designs before final implementation.

With UXPin, you can turn your ideas into reality quickly. It’s like having your design and prototype tools all in one place, saving you time and hassle. Plus, it makes teamwork a breeze, allowing you to collaborate smoothly with others. Ready to take your prototyping skills to the next level? Try UXPin for free today.

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Unity in Design – Basic Design Concepts Revisted

Unity in UI design is the cohesive arrangement of different elements within a user interface to create a visually harmonious and coherent experience for the end user. It involves organizing interface components such as buttons, icons, text, images, and other graphical elements in a way that they appear to belong together and form a unified whole.

This unity plays a crucial role in enhancing usability, aesthetics, and user satisfaction by creating a cohesive and well-integrated interface that communicates the intended message and facilitates user interactions.

In 2024, unity still remains to be an important principle of design. The evolution of design software and tools has given designers more flexibility and capabilities to achieve unity in innovative ways. For example, advanced software features allow for more precise control over layout, typography, and color palette, making it easier to maintain unity across various platforms.

Build a unified user interfaces and keep them so between design and development. UXPin is a prototyping tool that’s committed to making user interfaces unified. Use its functionalities to achieve a sense of unity that’s easy to replicate in code. Try UXPin for free.

What is unity principle of design ?

The unity principle of design is a fundamental concept in graphic and UI design as well as art. It refers to the idea of creating visual harmony and cohesion within the web design or app design. It involves organizing elements of design in a way that they appear to belong together and form a cohesive whole.

By applying the unity principle of design, designers can get a clear message across while keeping the design is visually appealing and easy to understand.

How does unity in design enhance user experience?

A unified interface enhances the overall user experience by making it easier for users to understand and navigate the interface. When elements are cohesive and consistent, users can more intuitively interact with the interface, leading to a smoother and more enjoyable experience.

Think of a webpage that doesn’t follow unity as the principle of design. Its header probably contains a mixture of different fonts, sizes, and colors for the logo, navigation menu, and contact information. The logo design clashes with the rest of the page. The navigation menu items are scattered randomly, with no consistent spacing or alignment. Text blocks vary in font size, color, and alignment, making it difficult for users to follow the content flow.

The website lacks a cohesive visual identity and appears haphazardly thrown together. It overwhelms users with conflicting visual elements, making it difficult to navigate and engage with the content. Users may feel disoriented and frustrated due to the lack of unity in design, ultimately leading to a negative user experience and high bounce rates.

Now, imagine a web design that that effectively follows the principle of unity. The heading features a clean and elegant logo that reflects the brand’s identity, using a simple and cohesive color scheme. A minimalist navigation menu is prominently displayed, with clear and consistent typography and use of white space.

The website embodies a sense of unity and coherence throughout its design, creating a tranquil and inviting user experience. The consistent use of color, typography, imagery, and layout reinforces the website’s theme and brand identity. Users feel immersed in a harmonious environment, enhancing their engagement and enjoyment of the website.

This kind of unity can be achieved through visual unity and conceptual unity. Let’s differentiate between the two.

Conceptual unity vs visual unity

Conceptual unity and visual unity are two aspects of design that play critical roles in creating cohesive and effective compositions, whether in art, graphic design, product design, or digital interfaces. Understanding the differences between these two types of unity can help designers better execute their projects according to the intended message or function.

Conceptual Unity

Conceptual unity refers to the coherence of the ideas behind a design. It focuses on the underlying theme or narrative that ties all elements of the work together. This type of unity is achieved when all parts of the design support a common message or concept, making the overall purpose of the design clear to the viewer.

Characteristics of Conceptual Unity:

Theme Consistency: All elements support a central theme or idea.
Message Cohesion: Every part of the design contributes to a unified message, enhancing the communication of a specific concept or story.
Emotional or Psychological Impact: The design evokes a consistent emotional response or intellectual engagement from the audience, aligned with the intended concept.

For example, in a marketing campaign, conceptual unity might be achieved through consistent messaging that aligns with the brand’s values across different media and platforms, even if the visual presentation varies.

Visual Unity

Visual unity, on the other hand, refers to the visual cohesiveness of elements within a design. It involves arranging the visual components in a way that they all feel part of a whole, usually by using consistent colors, shapes, sizes, or repeating patterns. Visual unity is crucial in guiding the viewer’s eye across the design and creating a sense of harmony and balance.

Characteristics of Visual Unity:

Repetition: Repeating visual elements like colors, shapes, or textures throughout the design.
Alignment: Arranging elements in a way that lines up along common axes or follows a specific grid structure.
Proximity: Grouping related items close together to emphasize their relationship.
Continuation: Creating a visual flow that leads the viewer’s eye through the design in a deliberate path.

Visual unity can be achieved through the consistent use of color schemes, typography, and layout structures across different pages, ensuring the site feels cohesive and navigable.

How to create unified design

design and development collaboration process product communication 1

Creating a unified design involves a thoughtful process that combines both conceptual and visual elements to produce a cohesive result.

Step 1: Fill out a design brief.

Detail the purpose, goals, and target audience of your design project. Include any specific messages or emotions you want to convey. Then, specify any necessary elements or constraints, such as branding guidelines, budget limits, or timelines. Remember to address potential challenges upfront to streamline the design process.

Step 2: Conduct a design workshop.

Get all relevant stakeholders involved in a design workshop, a dedicated time to brainstorm ideas and ensure that the expectations are aligned. Use the workshop to generate creative ideas and explore different approaches to the design. The workshop should end with a clear, agreed-upon direction for the visual and conceptual development of the project.

Step 3: Establish a visual style.

Decide on colors, typography, imagery, and overall aesthetic that align with the design brief. This style should visually communicate the intended message and appeal to the target audience. Then, create a style guide that will document these choices to maintain consistency throughout the design process.

Step 4: Gather content.

Before designing a mockup, start with content. Content-first design will help you determine how to create visual hierarchy and visual interest on the webpage or app page. It will also help you decide which elements should have more visual weight than others.

Step 5: Create a mockup.

Create detailed mockups of your design, which may include digital sketches or prototypes. Refine these mockups by continuously applying design principles to enhance visual and conceptual unity. For example, use balance and alignment to create a structured, aesthetically pleasing layout, arrange content to guide the viewer’s attention effectively, using contrast to highlight key areas, and more.

Step 6: Get feedback.

Have team members and stakeholders review the mockups, focusing on how well they meet the design brief and convey the intended message. If possible, gather feedback from potential users or members of your target audience to get insights into the effectiveness and appeal of your design.

Step 7: Hand the design to development.

Share with devs a prototype that contains specifications such as dimensions, behavior, and interactions. Provide comprehensive documentation to support the developers, including style guides and interaction descriptions. Maintain communication throughout the implementation phase to address any issues that may arise and ensure the design integrity is maintained.

Practice using unity in design

Unity in UI design is about organizing interface elements such as buttons, icons, text, and images in a cohesive manner, ultimately leading to improved usability and user satisfaction.

In 2024, unity remains a vital aspect of design, with advancements in design software providing designers with more tools to achieve it creatively. For instance, advanced features in software like precise layout control and color palette management contribute to maintaining unity across various platforms.

Tools like UXPin facilitate the creation of unified user interfaces by offering functionalities that streamline the design-to-development process. By leveraging such tools, designers can ensure that the unity achieved in design translates seamlessly into the final product. Create user interface designs that have a sense of unity. Try UXPin for free.

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Product Updates August 2024

Here are product updates that were released in UXPin in the last two months. They include new features, such as Paste & Replace, Flexbox for UXPin Merge, and a couple of usability and user management updates.

Paste & Replace

This feature allows you to copy an element to your clipboard, and then, swap it for an element that you have on the canvas with a key combination. Instead of deleting an element to paste another one in its place, use “Ctrl (Command) + C” to copy a component, image, shapes, etc. and paste it in the place of another element with a “Ctrl (Command) + V” key combination. It works for coded components, too.

Use New Canvas Sizes

Our users works with canvases instead of artboards as in Figma. When starting a new project, you need to adjust the canvas to your design purpose, be it a desktop application. You can do that in Properties Panel on the right.

We want to let you know that we’ve added new canvas presets, each corresponding to a device frame (like iPhone 15 Max). There’s also a corresponding device frame available for each new canvas size.

Set up Grid Styles

Grids in UI design and design systems are structural frameworks used to organize content on a page, ensuring consistency and alignment across different devices and screen sizes.

They serve as a foundational element in the layout of user interfaces, aiding designers in creating balanced, organized, and aesthetically pleasing designs.

UXPin now allows you to set up a predefined grid and add it to your design system library. You can set up a standard grid style and reuse it in every project.

Access specs with “Get Code” button

You might have noticed that we added a new button in the right corner of the editor – “Get code.” This button redirects you to Spec Mode, where you can find all the specifications needed to build the interface of your product with a single click, faster than ever.

In UXPin, you get all sorts of specifications (read about in in our docs):

redlining
grids
style guide
canvas size
colors
typography
assets
CSS code
JSX code with dependencies

User management for project groups

Now, Account Owners and Admins can see all the project groups created in the account including private ones. When a member who owned a private group is removed from the team, the ownership automatically transfers to Account Owner or Admin.

This feature is available on demand for Advanced, Enterprise, and Merge users.

Flexbox for Merge components

Flexbox is a layout model in CSS that provides an efficient way to lay out, align, and distribute space among items in a container. It is particularly useful for creating responsive and dynamic layouts.

We added Flexbox for coded components that works like Auto-Layout. You’ll find it on the right panel and the context menu. It’s an easy way to align, distribute, set gaps between elements, and adjust components responsively.

Usability improvements

We also added a couple of usability tweaks:

Panel management in the Editor – to give you more flexibility, we tweaked the way you can use Panels. You can open “Pages & Layers” and “Design System Library” panels at the same time.
Select nested components – in “Get Code” mode, hold “Command/Control” key and click on the nested component that you want to inspect. This is a faster way of inspecting individual components compared to the old way of selecting them through the Layers Panel.

Suggest new features to add to our roadmap

At UXPin, we’re always looking to improve and make your experience even better. If you have a brilliant idea or a feature you wish to see in our product, we’d love to hear from you.

Your feedback is incredibly important to us. Drop us an email at hello@uxpin.com with your suggestions and ideas for new features. Whether it’s a small tweak or a big addition, your input can help shape the future of UXPin. Haven’t used UXPin in a while? Start a free trial.

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Top 3 Design System Structures

Many teams envision creating a design system as a difficult, time-consuming project. It forces team members to audit their user interface, create a repository of design system elements and design guidelines and combine it in a way it’s usable for the entire organization

It’s not the only way you structure a design system, though. There are some simpler methods of creating this toolkit that is meant to speed up the design process. Let’s explore the best approaches for arranging a design system structure that achieves these goals.

Maximize the use of your design system in prototyping. Bring your design system’s building blocks to UXPin and design interactive prototypes that your devs can quickly translate to code. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

What is a Design System Structure?

A design system structure is a comprehensive framework that helps manage design at scale by providing a set of shared principles, patterns, and tools. It enables a consistent, coherent, and efficient design process across multiple teams and projects. The structure typically includes various components, each serving a distinct role in the overall system.

By having a well-structured design system, organizations can ensure a cohesive user experience across all products and platforms, streamline the design and development process, and foster collaboration among team members.

Design systems can be broadly categorized into three types based on their scope, usage, and complexity. Here they are:

Simple visual design repository
Atomic design system structure
Code-based design system structure.

Let’s explore them closely.

How Can You Structure a Design System?

When you combine design elements with the relevant documentation and guidelines, the system should form a coherent repository of things that are important for building user interfaces for a brand. But to achieve optimal design efficiency and system effectiveness, first, you must arrange it into a discernible structure. One that best suits your team’s needs and your organizational design objectives.

Simple visual design repository

This is the most basic of design system structures. As the NN Group explains, these visual design repositories come in various configurations, though the core focus here is simplicity.

At its fundamental level, a simple repository’s primary design system components consist of a style guide, a component library, and a pattern library. Together, these form the essentials for any functioning design system repository.

This structure only contains the essentials that constitute the system. It intends to provide the team members with what they need from the outset and allows them to create and add other assets and documentation as they go along. Shopify’s Polaris and Atlassian Design System use this type of design system structure.

Advantages:

The arrangement is simple to create and implement.
It encourages the design system team to tell the system’s basic structure from commencement.
And decisions are made on the move, fast-tracking development.

Drawbacks:

This arrangement lacks the structure provided by a strict hierarchy.
Teams tend to list the design system elements alphabetically or by their degree of importance, ignoring critical distinctions.
And it can be challenging to update and maintain this arrangement.

Atomic design

The atomic design structure was created by design systems advocate and author Brad Frost. It focuses on using order and a structured hierarchy to create an effective UI design system.

The atomic design methodology approaches design system structure by separating the process into five stages. The first three are modeled around the chemistry world, with the subsequent two relating to aspects of the world we can see. We explored atomic design system and its components in a separate article, but let’s recap the most important information here.

Each stage uses the previous one as its foundation. Every level consists of aggregated items from the preceding one. Like atoms constitute a molecule and molecules form an organism, this structure considers the smallest elemental components before moving on to the larger ones.

Atoms – These represent the most basic components of the design system.
Molecules – When those ‘atomic-level’ individual elements combine into groups, you’ll start to see bigger elements, coming together like lego pieces.
Organisms – By developing combinations of elemental design components into molecular groupings, organisms emerge. These form more complex design system UI components.
Templates – The next stage departs the realm of chemistry and heads into a more ‘macro’ world. Templates are where organisms can be curated and compiled into a cohesive, recognizable design.
Pages – Once you take a template and customize it, you have a page. By replacing the placeholder content in templates with tailored design content, you obtain the final, tangible product of the design system. Pages may not need to be designed for each and every case, but ensuring that there exist a few variations is a good idea.

Advantages:

Atomic design structure makes use of reusable components. Teams can divide various elements into basic atoms. These can then be applied and reapplied in different combinations and configurations.
Teams can easily spot those parts of a website or app that need various elemental components and create molecules and organisms accordingly.
This arrangement enables designers to use a design language that clearly defines a separation between content and structure.
This helps them be more creative and come up with different variants of the same components.

Disadvantages:

An atomic design structure can result in long, complex lists of components.
In some instances, having only a few components means maintaining multiple categories for them is pointless. This can complicate the overall methodology.

Code-based design system structure

This approach is among the most potent and effective for designing system structures. It is ideally suited for design teams working on digital product and new functionalities. Think about Material Design or Fluent UI design system.

This structure enables you to develop prototypes that look and behave just like the developer-built final product. This arrangement allows for more collaboration between designers and developers. The whole product team can count on a single source of truth informing their efforts.

The code-based design system arrangement is considered a relatively new approach in digital product system design. With it, designers can now employ functioning, developer-approved coded UI elements to scale digital product design.

Advantages:

The structure improves designer-developer cooperation.
It helps teams track changes in UI elements more effectively.
It improves overall efficiency from prototyping through to design handoff.

Disadvantages:

Designers need tools like UXPin with Merge tech to benefit from code-based design system.
Components can take lots of time to create.
Designers may require developer assistance to develop the system.

How Do You Choose the Right Design System Structure?

Deciding on the right design system structure is essential to giving your team the framework they need to design more efficiently. A design system structure aligned with your product design objectives will help designers collaborate better. This assists them in producing the digital products they’re capable of.

To ensure you’re picking a design system structure that aligns with your product team’s needs, ask yourself:

For whom is your design system being optimized? Is it for everybody across the organization, user experience designers, or, say, front-end developers only?
How many components and content types – from design patterns, coded UI components, and design guidelines to rollout plans and best practice policies – are you looking to integrate into the system?
At what stage of maturity is your design system currently at?

Effective design systems are dynamic entities capable of adapting to the challenges that come with growth and change. A design system’s inherent value lies in its ability to reduce the duplication of effort and facilitated collaboration.

Why UXPin Prefers a Code-Based Design System structure?

Using coded components in a design system enables sharing among design and developer teams. This allows them to rely on a single source of truth and to collaborate more effectively.

Teams across the organization can also manage all their design and prototyping projects simultaneously. This maintains a higher degree of consistency. In turn, developers can get stuck into translating design patterns into developer’s language.

UXPin Merge uses a code-based design system structure to design prototypes with a single source of truth. With it, designers can create prototypes for digital products that are consistent with developer’s workflow. Discover UXPin’s code-to-design solution.

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Color Tokens in Open Beta – Simplify Color Management

As part of our commitment to help you create consistent user interfaces, we’re excited to introduce Color Tokens — a powerful tool that brings a new level of precision and organization to your design workflow.

In open beta, you can set up a color token library, easily update your design system and control colors of your components. In the future, you will be able to facilitate the full design process with colors. Follow along the advice posted in this article. Set up a UXPin account. Try UXPin for free.

What are Color Tokens?

Color tokens are a set of predefined, reusable variables representing colors used in a design system.

Instead of manually applying hex codes or RGB values across different elements, designers can now use these tokens to ensure uniformity, consistency, as well as simplify updates and maintenance of colors in their design system.

Learn more about design tokens: What are design tokens?

Why Are Color Tokens Important?

Color Tokens help keep designs consistent by using the same colors across projects. They make updates easy, reducing manual work. They also help teams use a common set of colors, so everything looks cohesive and in line with company standards.

Consistency: By using Color Tokens, teams can ensure that the same color values are applied consistently across all design assets, eliminating discrepancies and maintaining brand integrity.
Efficiency: Tokens streamline the design process by reducing the need for repetitive tasks. When a color change is required, tokens can help designers and engineers do it quickly, saving time and reducing errors.
Collaboration: Color tokens facilitate better collaboration between designers and developers. With a shared language and defined color standards, design handoffs are smoother, and the implementation is more accurate.

How to Access Color Tokens in UXPin

Before you can access Color Tokens, you need to set them up. You can do that manually or convert an existing library into a Color Token library. See UXPin’s documentation for detailed instructions: Color Design Tokens.

Convert an existing library

If you created a Color library in UXPin before July 17th, 2024, you can convert it to a token library and use the saved colors as token colors.

Open the existing library, click Library Settings and Click ‘convert library to use colors as tokens’. Save changes and you’re good to use those colors as tokens.

Set up a new library

To create a Color Token library, you need to navigate to Design System Library in UXPin. Open Design System Libraries (or press “cmd” + “2” to get there faster).

Then, at the bottom of the panel, click “+ New library”. Navigate to the colors section and get ready to add Color Tokens.

You can set up Color Tokens in two ways:

Copy colors from selected elements – select one or more elements on the canvas and click “+Add” in the library panel to add the colors as tokens.
Type in a color HEX code – enter the HEX codes to set up Color Tokens automatically.

The colors from your library will also appear in the Color Picker, so you can quickly apply them to elements on the canvas. Select the element that you want to switch a color of and choose an appropriate color from the library.

This trick works for setting up the colors for properties like fill, border, and shadow.

What Can You Do with Color Tokens in UXPin?

Change colors of elements that you have on the canvas – Pick an element and add a color to it from the saved Color Tokens.
Update colors in your design system – If you use a design system, you can now try new colors and change your design system library for a more modern look.
Maintain a uniform look within a project – Access the same Color Tokens in every new prototype that you and your teammates create within a project.
Share Color Tokens across your organization – Share your design system library with tokens across your organizations, so everyone can use the same Color Tokens.
Manage Color Tokens as you like – Set up new Color Tokens, update existing ones, share them with your team, and more.

A Step Towards Comprehensive Design Tokens

Introducing Color Tokens is just the beginning. At UXPin, we understand that Design Tokens extend far beyond color. As part of our commitment to creating a robust design system, we are actively working on expanding our token offerings to include typography, spacing, and other design elements.

This comprehensive approach will further enhance consistency, improve scalability, and streamline the entire design-to-development workflow.

Use code-backed components in both design and development. Build advanced prototypes effortlessly and generate production-ready code directly from the design. Try UXPin for free.

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Admin UI — How to Design it Fast for a React App

Admin UI is a graphical user interface designed for administrators to manage and control a system, application, or website. This interface is distinct from the regular user interface and provides advanced features and controls necessary for overseeing and configuring various aspects of the system.

The Admin UI often includes functionalities such as user management, access control, system configuration, monitoring, and reporting tools. It is designed to be intuitive for administrators and typically requires authentication to access to ensure security.

The specific features and design of an Admin UI can vary depending on the context, such as whether it’s for a web application, server, database, or any other system that requires administrative oversight. Admin UIs are crucial for simplifying complex administrative tasks and ensuring that administrators can efficiently and securely manage the underlying system or application.

Build a React app Admin UI with UXPin Merge — a drag-and-drop UI builder that allows you to create interfaces with React components, and then, export their code with a single click. Try UXPin Merge for free.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

What is Admin UI?

Admin UI (short for Administrative User Interface) is a graphical interface designed for administrators to manage and control system settings, user permissions, and other advanced configurations in a simplified and intuitive manner.

It’s an essential tool that empower app providers, website owners, and system administrators to effectively configure, manage, secure, and monitor their applications and systems, contributing to the smooth operation and success of the digital services they provide.

It provides security against unauthorized access to data, handling backend of an app, website or system, and other things that administrators are tasked with.

What are Admin UI examples?

WordPress Dashboard

Take WordPress. Its admin panel serves as a great example of a high-quality Admin UI design due to its user-friendly UX design, powerful features, and widespread adoption. It’s designed with a focus on user-friendly navigation. The menu structure is intuitive, making it easy for users, including those with limited technical expertise, to find and manage various functionalities.

The WordPress Admin dashboard design provides a comprehensive overview of the site’s key metrics, recent activity, and quick access to essential tasks. This summary allows administrators to grasp the site’s status at a glance.

This admin UI panel is modular, allowing users to rearrange and customize widgets on the dashboard. This flexibility enables administrators to tailor the interface based on their specific needs and preferences. It also incorporates security features, including password strength indicators, user role management, and the ability to enforce two-factor authentication through plugins.

eCommerce Dashboard

Another example of Admin UI is a dashboard that we built to show our users how to use coded components in UXPin. This dashboard features different sales metrics that are essential for the business, a couple of charts, order history, and a quick employee FAQ to help with onboarding.

You can edit this admin dashboard example. See it up close here: Ant Design Dashboard Example.

What should be in an admin dashboard?

App providers, website owners, and system administrators build administrative user interfaces to handle following tasks:

System Configuration and Management: Admin UIs provide a dedicated space for configuring and managing various aspects of a system, application, or website. This includes settings related to functionality, user roles, permissions, and system preferences.
User Management: Admin UIs allow administrators to manage users efficiently. This includes tasks such as user registration, authentication, role assignment, and user profile management. Admins can also monitor user activity and take appropriate actions.
Content and Data Management: Admin UIs enable the management of content and data within an application or website. This involves tasks such as creating, editing, and deleting content, as well as organizing data in a structured manner.
Access Control and Security: Admin user interfaces play a crucial role in access control and security management. System administrators can define user roles, permissions, and restrictions to ensure that sensitive information is protected, and only authorized individuals have access to certain features or data.
Real-Time Monitoring and Analytics: Such user interfaces often include an admin dashboard for monitoring the performance and usage of the mobile or web app (or website.) This may involve tracking user activity, analyzing system logs, and generating reports to gain insights into how the system is being used.
Debugging and Troubleshooting: For system administrators, Admin UIs serve as a valuable tool for debugging and troubleshooting issues. They can view error logs, diagnose problems, and take corrective actions without delving into the technical details of the underlying infrastructure.
Updates and Maintenance: Admin UIs facilitate the process of updating and maintaining the application or website. This includes applying patches, installing updates, and managing version control to ensure that the system remains secure and up-to-date.
Customization and Configuration: Admin UIs often allow for customization and configuration of the user interface itself. This can include themes, layouts, and other visual elements that suit the preferences of the administrators.
Workflow Automation: Admin UIs may include features that enable administrators to automate certain workflows and tasks, streamlining repetitive processes and increasing overall efficiency.
Enhanced User Experience for Administrators: By providing a dedicated and user-friendly interface for administrators, an Admin UI ensures that those responsible for managing the system can do so efficiently and with minimal friction. This improves the overall user experience for administrators.

Your admin UI design will depend on the task that you need an admin panel for. For examples, CRM apps need real-time monitoring and analytics dashboard UI, while CMS need a wide range of customizations as well as content and data management.

How to design an Admin UI for a React app?

React Admin UI can be designed pretty fast once you use UI components that come from an open-source React library like the one created by Material Design or Bootstrap teams. Such components will be a foundation of your design system, ensuring that the Admin UI design is consistent and high-quality.

For the purpose of this tutorial, we will show you how to quickly assemble an interactive admin dashboard with MUI components. In our app, you may find an admin dashboard template. We have also UI kits that make React UI design super easy and fast.

Let’s start.

Step 1: Pick UI components.

Material Design offers a rich set of pre-designed components that serve as the foundation for your admin UI. From navigation bars to data tables, Material UI provides a comprehensive suite of components. Identify the components that align with your admin dashboard requirements, ensuring a consistent and professional appearance.

You can preview the components in MUI documentation or jump straight to UXPin to see which components we offer as part of our Merge library. To do that, start a new project, create a new prototype, and pick the Library and Design System icon from the bottom-left corner. Next, search for MUIv5 and preview all the components. If you want to group components together, you may use a responsive flexbox.

We recommend you following UI components for building admin user interface:

Table – it’s a data display component for building a basic table, data table, dense table, and manage sorting and selecting; more about in official documentation.
Bar Chart – one of MUI-X chart components for expressing quantities.
Line Chart– a MUI-X chart component for showing trends.
Pie Chart – the last MUI-X chart component that we want to highlight here.
List – a data display component for different types of lists that can be fully interactive.
Typography – one of the handy data display components for input.
Select – an input component that allows users to pick an item from a drop-down list; more about how to style it in official docs.
Menu – a complex navigation component.
Breadcrumbs – a handy navigation component to add for user-friendly websites.

They all belong to our built-in Merge library, so you can easily find them in UXPin. We also have more input, navigation components, as well as the ones for theming.

Step 2: Arrange UI components and change their properties.

Assemble the chosen components to create the layout of your admin dashboard. MUI’s modular structure allows for easy arrangement and customization. Adjust properties such as colors, typography, and spacing to match your app’s branding and visual identity. This step ensures a cohesive design that resonates with your users.

If you want to learn more about using MUI components in UXPin, watch this part of our mini-course on using UXPin’s library.

Step 3: Set up interactions.

Enhance user experience by adding interactive elements. MUI components in UXPin come with built-in interactivity, but you can further customize or add event handlers to meet specific requirements. Consider incorporating features like collapsible panels, responsive navigation, and tooltips to make your admin UI intuitive and user-friendly.

UXPin’s editor is code-based, so you’re working with a fully coded components, but you also have an option of adding interactions, like clickable menu that leads you to another page, an alert popping up in front of the users or input validation. You can add such interactions with variables, interactions, and expressions. More about them in our docs.

Before moving forward, share your admin dashboard prototype with stakeholders for feedback. Material-UI’s components not only enhance design consistency but also facilitate a quicker review process. Collect input on the layout, usability, and overall aesthetics to ensure alignment with the project’s goals.

UXPin has a Preview mode that allows you to see design as if it was a real thing, and share it with your stakeholders for feedback. This is a great feature, because UXPin’s design’s are fully interactive, and you don’t need to leave a tool for other people to test them by themselves. It helps with stakeholder reviews.

The shortcut for accessing the preview is Command + P.

The preview also contains a sitemap, and for mobile designs, you can use our Mirror App and run an app on hand-held devices.

Step 5: Export React code to develop the app.

Once your admin dashboard design is approved, UXPin simplifies the process of exporting React code off your MUI-based design. This code can be seamlessly integrated into your React app, saving development time and ensuring a smooth transition from design to implementation.

Just go to the Preview mode we discussed earlier, navigate to Spec Mode and then, export the code. You can open the code directly in Stackblitz or just copy it to another dev environment that you’re using.

Design more than Admin UI in UXPin

Designing an Admin UI for a React app becomes a seamless process when utilizing powerful and well-designed UI components. MUI, with its extensive library and flexibility, allows developers to create a consistent, visually appealing, and interactive admin dashboard. By following these steps, you can efficiently design and implement an Admin UI that meets both user and stakeholder expectations.

Ready to explore design in UXPin? With our pre-built templates, trial kits, ready React components, you will become a design wizard instantly. Just drag and drop components on the canvas, adjust their props, and you’re ready for the product development phase. Try UXPin for free.

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Bootstrap vs React Bootstrap — A Quick Overview

Bootstrap is a popular open-source front-end framework for developing responsive and mobile-first websites. It was developed by Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton at Twitter and released in 2011. Bootstrap itself does not use React, but there are integrations like React-Bootstrap that provide Bootstrap components as React components. This library eliminates jQuery dependency and are more suitable for React projects. Let’s discuss the differences between the two.

Build fully functional user interfaces with React components 10x faster. Use UXPin Merge, a UI builder for React apps to plan the layout, test user experience, and start React development super fast. Try UXPin Merge for free.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

What is Bootstrap?

Bootstrap is a popular open-source front-end framework used for developing responsive websites. Developed by Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton at Twitter, it was initially released in 2011.

Bootstrap was created to address the challenges of developing consistent, responsive, and user-friendly web applications across different browsers and devices. Before Bootstrap, web developers often faced issues with cross-browser compatibility and had to create custom styles and UI components from scratch, which was time-consuming and often led to inconsistencies.

Before launching Bootstrap, developers mostly wrote their own custom CSS to style their web applications (which involved a steep learning curve) or used boilerplates like HTML5 Boilerplate. They also used JavaScript and jQuery plugins to add interactivity and dynamic elements to their websites. This included custom scripts for modals, carousels, and other interactive components.

Bootstrap’s introduction provided a comprehensive, all-in-one solution that simplified the development process, leading to its rapid adoption and popularity among web developers.

The newest version of Bootstrap is Bootstrap 5 which was released to bring modern updates, improved features, and better performance (such as the removal of jQuery, enhanced grid and form systems, a new utilities API, etc.)

When to Use Bootstrap

Quick Setup: Bootstrap allows for rapid development of prototypes and MVPs. Its pre-styled components and responsive grid system make it easy to get a project up and running quickly.
Reusable Components: Use ready-made Bootstrap CSS’s components like buttons, forms, modals, and navigation bars without having to design them from scratch.
Built-In Responsiveness: Bootstrap’s grid system and responsive utilities make it easier to create layouts that work well on various devices and screen sizes without extensive custom CSS.
Mobile-First Approach: Designed with a mobile-first philosophy, ensuring good performance on mobile devices, and making front-end development easier.
Community Support: Extensive community resources, themes, and plugins are available, making it easier to find solutions and enhancements.

Consider other frameworks or custom solutions when:

Your project demands highly customized user interface.
Performance is a top priority and you need a lighter framework.
You’re building a single-page application and need a full-featured JavaScript framework with integrated UI components.

Examples of Projects Ideal for Bootstrap

Bootstrap is heavily involved in the View Layer of MVC model. It provides a wide range of CSS styles and components to create responsive, visually appealing, and consistent user interfaces. It’s a versatile and powerful development framework for responsive design, and consistent UI.

Here are some examples of Bootstrap use cases:

Corporate Websites: For company websites where a professional and consistent design is important, Bootstrap provides the necessary tools to create a polished user interface.
Landing Pages: Quick and responsive landing pages for marketing campaigns can be efficiently built using Bootstrap’s grid system and pre-styled components.
Personal Blogs and Portfolios: For personal projects like blogs or portfolios, Bootstrap’s ease of use and customization options make it a great choice to get started quickly.
Admin Dashboards: Many admin dashboard templates are built with Bootstrap due to its comprehensive component library, which makes it easy to create complex user interfaces.
Educational Projects: If you’re working on a school project or learning web development, Bootstrap can help you implement web designs quickly and understand fundamental web development concepts.

Several well-known companies use Bootstrap for their web development needs due to its flexibility, ease of use, and responsive design capabilities. Most notable examples are Twitter (the birthplace of Bootstrap), Spotify, and LinkedIn.

Does Bootstrap uses React?

Bootstrap itself does not use React; it is primarily a CSS framework with optional JavaScript components that are built using vanilla JavaScript and jQuery. However, there are integrations and libraries that combine Bootstrap with React.js to leverage the strengths of both.

The most popular Bootstrap and React integration is React Bootstrap, which comes in handy when you are creating single-page applications.

What is React Bootstrap?

React Bootstrap is a Javascript library that integrates the popular Bootstrap framework with React, providing Bootstrap components as React components. This integration allows developers to use Bootstrap’s styles and components in a way that is idiomatic to React, avoiding the need for jQuery and ensuring compatibility with React’s component-based architecture.

Key Features of React Bootstrap

Bootstrap Components as React Components: React Bootstrap provides a comprehensive set of Bootstrap components that have been converted to React components. This includes buttons, forms, modals, tooltips, carousels, and more.
Reusability: Components can be reused across different parts of the application or even in different projects.
Scalability: Each component encapsulates its own structure, style, and behavior, making it easier to manage and scale individual parts of the application.
No jQuery Dependency: React Bootstrap eliminates the need for jQuery, which is required by the original Bootstrap’s JavaScript components. This makes it more suitable for modern React applications.
Customizable and Extensible: Just like Bootstrap, React Bootstrap components are highly customizable. You can override default styles and behaviors to fit your application’s needs.
Declarative Syntax: React’s declarative syntax improves code readability and maintainability. Developers can easily understand the structure and flow of the UI by looking at the component tree.
Virtual DOM: React uses a virtual DOM to efficiently update and render only the parts of the UI that have changed. This results in better performance, especially for large and dynamic applications.
Consistent API: React Bootstrap components are designed to have a consistent API, making them easy to use and integrate into your React application.
Responsive Design: The library retains Bootstrap’s responsive design capabilities, allowing you to create layouts that work well on various devices and screen sizes.
Built with React Principles: Components are built following React best practices, ensuring compatibility with React’s lifecycle methods, hooks, and state management.

Can Bootstrap Replace React?

No, Bootstrap cannot replace React. Bootstrap and React serve different purposes in web development, and they are often used together rather than one replacing the other.

Bootstrap is a front-end CSS framework. It is primarily used for styling and layout. React, on the other hand, is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. It is primarily used for managing UI logic and state. Bootstrap and React have two different roles and use cases.

They are often used together to leverage the strengths of both. For example, you can use React to manage the dynamic and interactive aspects of your web app, while Bootstrap provides the styling and responsive design. Libraries like React-Bootstrap make it easier to use Bootstrap components within React applications, providing pre-styled Bootstrap components as React components.

There are other JavaScript frameworks and libraries that can serve as alternatives or replacements for React, such as Vue, Angular or Svelte.

For native mobile applications using JavaScript and React, use React Native. It’s a framework developed and maintained by Facebook, React Native uses the same design principles and component-based architecture as React but is tailored for mobile app development.

What is better — Bootstrap or React Bootstrap?

Feature	Bootstrap	React-Bootstrap
Primary Use	CSS and JS framework	React component library
Integration	Can be used with any project	Specifically for React
JavaScript Dependency	Requires jQuery for JS components	No jQuery dependency
Component-Based	No	Yes
Customization	Custom CSS or SASS	React props and state
Learning Curve	Easier for non-React projects	Easier for React developers
Dynamic Behavior	Custom JS or jQuery	Handled through React

Choose Bootstrap if:
- You are not using React or are using a different front-end framework or library.
- You need a quick and easy way to style a static or server-rendered site.
- You are comfortable managing JavaScript behavior separately or with jQuery.
Choose React-Bootstrap if:
- You are building or planning to build a React application.
- You want to follow React best practices and patterns.
- You prefer managing your UI components as React components, taking advantage of React’s state management and lifecycle methods.

Ultimately, the choice depends on your project’s requirements and your web development environment. For React projects, React-Bootstrap offers a more seamless and integrated user experience, while for non-React projects, Bootstrap provides a robust and versatile styling solution.

What is React Bootstrap used for?

React-Bootstrap is a great choice for beginners. The ability to quickly prototype and build applications helps beginners grasp core concepts without being overwhelmed by the intricacies of CSS, web page design and JSX, which is a syntax extension for JavaScript that allows you to write HTML-like code within your JavaScript files.

Corporate Websites

Build professional websites for businesses with responsive layouts and consistent design that fit the ecosystem of digital products.

Blogs

Develop a blog or CMS with features like post creation, editing, and displaying content.

E-commerce Platforms

Build online stores with product listings, shopping carts, and checkout processes.

Admin Dashboards

Create powerful and interactive admin dashboards for managing data and analytics.

Social Media Platforms

Develop social networking sites with user profiles, posts, and messaging features.

Educational Platforms

Create online learning platforms with course listings, user profiles, and interactive content.

Landing Pages

Check out this React-Bootstrap example of a pricing page that you can build in UXPin.

Use React Bootstrap to Build your App’s UI

Boostrap and React Bootstrap are both frontend toolkits — they simplify front-end development workflow. If you are building a React-based web app, React-Bootstrap is the better choice. Bootstrap relies on jQuery for its JavaScript components, which can be unnecessary overhead in a React project. React-Bootstrap eliminates the need for jQuery, aligning with modern JavaScript practices and ensuring a lighter, more efficient application.

If your project does not use React or if you need a quick, static site, standard Bootstrap might be more straightforward and quicker to implement. However, for dynamic, interactive applications, React-Bootstrap’s component-based approach offers greater flexibility and scalability.

To build React app with React Bootstrap components, choose UXPin Merge. It’s a powerful builder and the only prototyping tool that allows you to use real React Bootstrap components to build your app. Try UXPin Merge for free.

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DesignOps at Uber – Who Are Design Program Managers?

At UXPin’s Design Value Conference in March 2022, we hosted five design industry leaders to understand Design and DesignOps at some of the world’s biggest organizations.

One of those speakers was Maggie Dieringer, Senior Design Program Manager at Uber. Maggie has worked as a DPM at Uber since 2016 on the Rides and Eats products and has gained valuable experience working alongside some of the world’s best tech talent.

In her 30-minute talk at Design Value Conference 2022, Maggie shared insights about how she helped build Uber’s DesignOps from the ground up. Maggie talks about her practical approach to DesignOps, including three key “framing factors” DPMs must consider when working with design teams and stakeholders.

Enable your designers and engineers to use a single source of truth in design and code. Use UXPin’s revolutionary Merge technology to solve some of the biggest DesignOps challenges. Explore what UXPin Merge is about.

What is Design Program Manager?

Design Program Managers are professionals responsible for overseeing and coordinating the design processes within an organization.

They ensure that design projects are executed efficiently, align with business objectives, and meet quality standards. DPMs act as a bridge between design teams and other departments, facilitating communication and collaboration to achieve the desired outcomes.

What are Key Responsibilities of Design Program Managers?

Design Program Managers play a crucial role in bridging the gap between design teams and other departments, ensuring that design projects are completed on time, within budget, and to the highest quality standards. They manage resources, mitigate risks, and continuously seek ways to improve design processes and outcomes.

Project Management:
- Plan, organize, and manage design projects from inception to completion.
- Develop project timelines, milestones, and deliverables.
- Monitor project progress and adjust plans as needed to meet deadlines.
Team Coordination:
- Coordinate activities of cross-functional teams, including designers, developers, and marketing professionals.
- Facilitate effective communication among team members to ensure alignment and collaboration.
- Assign tasks and responsibilities to team members based on their skills and expertise.
Stakeholder Management:
- Serve as the primary point of contact for stakeholders, including clients, executives, and other departments.
- Communicate project status, risks, and issues to stakeholders.
- Gather and incorporate stakeholder feedback into the design process.
Resource Allocation:
- Allocate resources, including personnel, budget, and tools, to ensure project success.
- Manage resource constraints and identify potential solutions to resource-related challenges.
Quality Assurance:
- Ensure that design outputs meet quality standards and align with the organization’s brand and goals.
- Conduct regular reviews and critiques of design work to maintain high standards.
- Implement processes for continuous improvement in design quality.
Risk Management:
- Identify potential risks and issues that could impact project success.
- Develop and implement mitigation strategies to address risks.
- Monitor and adjust risk management plans as necessary.
Process Development:
- Develop and refine design processes and workflows to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
- Implement best practices and standards in design project management.
- Train team members on new processes and tools.
Budget Management:
- Develop and manage project budgets.
- Monitor expenditures and ensure projects stay within budget.
- Provide financial reports and updates to stakeholders.
Performance Tracking:
- Track and report on key performance indicators (KPIs) related to design projects.
- Use data and metrics to evaluate project success and identify areas for improvement.
- Implement performance improvement initiatives based on data insights.
Innovation and Trends:
- Stay updated on industry trends, tools, and technologies in design and project management.
- Introduce new ideas and innovations to improve design processes and outputs.
- Foster a culture of creativity and innovation within the design team.

DPMS is short for Design Program Manager. It’s Maggie’s role at Uber.

DesignOps at Uber

When Maggie started at Uber, two people were on the DesignOps team, including herself. The team’s scope covered seven categories:

DesignOps: tooling, facility management, org management, DPM brand, etc.
Portfolio Planning: annual and six-month planning, scaling practices across teams, MTR, headcount comms, etc.
Roadmap Management: prioritization, managing cutlines, stack ranking with leadership, scoping, sequencing, QA, advocates for quality, etc.
Comms & Events: external brand, recruiting experience, office culture, team/internal/industry events, team meetings, celebration and recognition, team health, etc.
Modeling, Tracking, Reporting: Resourcing & allocation, negotiation of work, dependency tracking, intake of work, UX allocation reporting, kickoffs, crit management, design review templatization, etc.
Finance & Growth: budget/T&E/morale tracking, headcount allocation, growth narrative, playbooks and toolkits, etc.
Learning & Development: training, internal/external skill shares, external design events, onboarding, talent reviews/promo management, career paths, competencies, inspiring teams, external speakers, etc.

As of March 2022, Uber’s DesignOps team has grown to 16 team members, supporting six offices (in US/CAN, EMEA, and LATAM), with an additional four team members who work cross teams at strategic DesignOps positions.

TeamOps & ResearchOps x 6 team members
Product DPMs x 12 team members
Director & Strategic x 4 team members

Uber’s Approach to Framing & Scaling the DPM Role

Maggie shared her team’s strategy for increasing the DPM’s influence at various levels. She talked about three things.

Framing and scaling DPM (around your needs depending on your organization’s current priorities)
Increasing DPM impact
Supporting DPM trajectory

Framing and Scaling DPM

Ask yourself, “where is your time best spent?” and “how do you ensure that you’re having the most impact with that time?”

Maggie believes there is no right or wrong way to do something, but instead, we should frame our work to focus on impact. This approach aligns with one of Uber’s DesignOps principles, which reads: “Our success is based on the impact our work has on product, business, design, and customer experiences. This impact may be organizational, strategic, or executional.”

Maggie identifies the three framing factors that have the most impact in her day-to-day:

What’s the size of the design team and the state of the organization?
What type of resourcing and allocation environment are we operating in?
What level is my primary design partner?

Framing Factor One: Size & State of the Design Org

designops increasing collaboration group collab

The state and size of your organization have a significant impact on what level you’re managing and supporting teams.

“Regardless of the state of the organization or the team’s size, we meet the teams where they are at.” Maggie Dieringer, Senior Design Program Manager at Uber

State:

How long has the team been around?
What is the organization’s level of maturity?

Size:

How big is the design team, area, sub-area, or portfolio you’re supporting?

State of the Design Org

Maggie defines the team’s state and maturity on a spectrum from nascent to established. This definition is important because a DPM’s approach is very different at opposite ends of the spectrum.

For example, a DPM will focus on implementing processes and frameworks to facilitate growth and development in a nascent organization. Conversely, for established teams, a DPM focuses on evolution, iteration, evangelizing, and improving existing processes and frameworks to accommodate growth.

Size of the Design Org

Size is another component of the first framing factor. Maggie uses a similar spectrum with 10-15 team members on the low end and 30-50 on the high end.

The industry standard is one DPM for every 10-15 designers, but this ratio isn’t the reality for many DesignOps experts.

For a 15:1 ratio, DPMs are able to integrate with the design team to offer granular support, including tasks like:

Meeting with IC designers daily
Managing and running team meetings
Attending and running design reviews
Project management
Optimizing collaboration on a micro level

As the ratio increases, DPMs lean more towards a high-level approach:

Meeting with IC designers monthly
Meeting with managers daily
Going to crits every few months
Attending design reviews to help connect the dots
Collaboration at a macro level
Vision exercises

Framing Factor Two: Design Team Resourcing

designops increasing collaboration group

The way you set up your engagement and staffing model, as well as the allocation and organizational strategy, can have an immense impact on how DesignOps can and will lean in.

Engagement Model:

What type of staffing engagement does the team operate in?

Allocation:

Is the team you support well-staffed or operating lean?

Engagement Model

Maggie uses a spectrum to identify the organization’s staffing model with “flexible” on one end and “fully dedicated” on the opposite. Like size in Framing Factor One, the staffing model can help determine on what level DPMs can engage with teams.

In a flexible model, DPMs may need to go deep into one area, whereas in a fully dedicated model they may zoom out and focus more holistically across many areas.

Allocation

Another consideration for resourcing is whether the company is constrained on resourcing, in growth mode (actively hiring), or somewhere between. In a constrained staffing model, DPMs must be creative, working with all available resources.

In growth mode, DPMs have more freedom to look at high-level vision and what the organizational growth strategy could look like.

Framing Factor Three: Level of Partnership

Level:

Are you partnering mainly with the ICs (individual contributors), Leads, Manager, or a Director?

Exposure:

Has your partner worked with a DPM before?

Level

When working with Design Managers and middle management, Maggie has found that she focuses more on a single area and activities like load balancing, team health, education on how to work with design, and other supporting roles.

On the other end of the spectrum, at the director level, DPMs work on organizing the leadership team who reports through the director, organizational strategy, looking at cross-team dependencies, scaling programs, and broader, more team-wide activities.

Exposure

The second consideration for factor three is your partner’s exposure to DesignOps, and have they worked with a DPM before? If your partner is unfamiliar with DesignOps, it’s crucial to educate them about the DPM role and set expectations.

Maggie says it’s important for DPMs to outline their roles and responsibilities at the beginning of a partnership, including what they don’t work on, to set clear boundaries and expectations.

Increase DPM’s Impact

Increasing your impact as a DPM depends on the desired level of engagement for you and your team. Again Maggie uses a spectrum to assess the activities.

DPMs are more hands-on when zoomed in, working with teams on day-to-day tasks. When zoomed out, DPMs focus more on advocating, strategy, and planning.

The team’s size and designer/DPM ratio have a significant influence on whether DPMs can operate at a zoomed-in or zoomed-out level of engagement.

“We use our size to help drive the desired DPM engagement.” Maggie Dieringer, Senior Design Program Manager at Uber

Support DPM Trajectory

Maggie asks these five crucial questions often when considering DPM’s long-term goals:

Which activities and environments bring me job fulfillment day-to-day?
Which activities will have the most impact and influence right NOW on the team I support?
How can I leverage my partner to work on the things that are important to my career?
How can I use my team size to influence the desired behavior and engagement?
Do I thrive doing tactical or strategic activities (or both)?

Maggie recommends that DPMs complete a framing exercise using the three factors above to plot where they think they can have the most impact.

Based on the activities mentioned in the three framing factors:

Where are you today?
Where do you want to be?
Where does your team want to be?

Watch Maggie’s full 30-minute DesignOps Layers of Impact webinar on YouTube. If you prefer reading, head onto the blog post that recaps the full conference.

Increase DPM Impact With UXPin Merge

UXPin Merge helps you enhance design consistency and collaboration between design and development teams. It’s one of the tools that every DPM should have in their arsenal to optimize design process and create impact faster. Check out UXPin Merge and see how it can help you mature design at your org.

Want to Convert Design To Code? Here’s A Better Way

Whether creating a web page, Android app, or iOS app, most traditional designers start their work by creating static images with tools like Adobe XD, Figma, or even Photoshop. The designs might look aesthetically pleasing but they are not even close to being ready to be converted into code.

After the designing phase, designers need to add interactions that will show developers and testers how UI elements correspond with one another, what affordances they need to account for, and any other animations that will be present in the end-result. Then, designers pass those prototypes to developers who turn designs into code, and the circle of back and forth commentaries begins.

It’s time to move beyond this tedious process by taking a code-based approach to design. Once you think about the waste of time of animating or annotating vector-based design to communicate interactions, it quickly becomes obvious that your design team needs a better way to create products that users will love.

Bridge the gap between design and code once and for all with UXPin Merge. Bring your coded design system to UXPin’s design editor for hi-fi prototyping and quality usability testing. Discover UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

What is design to code?

Design to code is the process of translating a design mockup or prototype to code that can be implemented by developers to create functional user interfaces. This process involves converting graphical elements, layout structures, interaction designs, and other visual components into HTML, CSS, and possibly JavaScript code that can be interpreted by web browsers or other platforms.

Design to code is a crucial step in the product development as it means going from a concept of a product to an end-result. It ensures that the visual and interactive aspects of a product or application are accurately represented in the final implementation. This process often involves collaboration between designers and developers to ensure that the design intent is preserved while addressing technical constraints and requirements.

Challenges of converting design to code

Design-to-code approach creates more steps than you need to create a popular digital product. The process of turning prototype to code probably affects this areas:

Ideation and Product Development – Coming up with ideas to be turned into products or features.
Design Conceptualization – Communicating ideas to the design team.
Design Review and Feedback – Reviewing the work of the design team and giving some feedback.
Tool Limitations – Designers struggling with the limited possibilities of adding advanced interactions in their design tool.
Communication – A lot of back-and-forth in the designer-dev communication, trying to smoothen some prototype inconsistencies.
Iterative Refinement – Adding some tweaks until the product fulfills the original vision.

These steps can take weeks or months to complete. Even when you use a tool like Avocode and Anima to turn PSD, Figma, and others that turn designs into code, you still need relentless prototype and product testing to ensure that all interactions work as they were designed.

You still need to deal with unnecessary steps because Avocode and Anima can only convert designs into code. They do not offer a designing environment that can use code to design a UI.

Design to code wastes time and money

Not surprisingly, the serpentine process of passing work between product managers, designers, and developers quickly becomes expensive. In the United States, website developers with associate’s degrees can expect to earn about $35.46 per hour (€ 29.5). The longer development and prototyping take, the more it costs to bring the product to market.

Without code-based design, though, the process will always involve backtracking and repeating steps. It’s clear that the design to code handoff process wastes time and money.

Popular website designer Matthew Strom found that he could streamline his process by designing with code instead of starting with static images. While building a new homepage for WSJ. Magazine, he found that working with code was often more straightforward and rewarding than taking a vector-first approach. He discovered that the old process became sluggish as he created more images.

Thankfully, Strom knows enough code to build a complicated homepage without relying on design tools for every step. Unfortunately, few designers have the experience to create digital products from code.

Prototyping suffers with design to code

You can improve the design to development process slightly by encouraging your designers to learn basic code. Knowing the fundamentals of HTML and CSS gives designers a shared understanding that helps them anticipate the needs of developers.

It makes the process even better when designers know some front-end JavaScript and Ajax because it gives them insight into how much work it will take developers to turn their static designs into interactive components.

Some coding experience also helps designers understand the limitations of development. It can make a huge difference when graphic designers have a baseline understanding of what developers can and cannot do.

However, the code-to-design approach doesn’t mean that a designer must know all of that. It’s enough to sync developers’ repo where they store UI code components with the design tool editor to empower designers to use the production-ready parts in their designs. Not only is it faster but also much more consistent with the design standards. Thanks to this, you can avoid all the reviewing and repetition stages in the whole product development process.

Without a code-based approach to design, you end up with prototypes that don’t function as anticipated, which inevitably means you end up wasting even more resources.

Make designing and prototyping easier with a design tool based on code generation

A tool that enables having your UI code components imported to a design library is much more efficient than the one that converts an image to code.

UXPin Merge bridges the gap between the process of translating prototype to code. Teams use the same UI elements throughout their processes, both to design a product and to develop it. Thus, there’s no misalignment, duplicated work, and misunderstandings. Teams can ship products faster and with ease.

Improve workflow with code components

Instead of interpreting image-based designs and turning the ideas into code, developers just take the components that were used in a design from their library to build ready products.

As the code-powered prototypes already behave like a final product, there’s no need for additional reviewing steps – the result of developers’ work will be pixel-perfect to the designers’ work.

Test user interfaces and interactive design elements with fully functional prototypes

You need to meet the project manager’s specifications before you embark on turning a prototype into a product you can release.

UXPin Merge gives your team members an opportunity to test the functionality of interactive components before committing to a development process.

With UXPin Merge, though, it’s often difficult to tell the difference between the prototype and the finalized product. That’s how strong initial testing becomes when you build digital products with code and use real data to test interactions.

Request access to UXPin Merge for code-based designing and prototyping

You don’t have to continue the tedious process of building products from a design-first perspective. Shorten your go-to-market process, improve collaboration between departments, and take control of your designs with UXPin Merge. Now, you can test building UI with UXPin Merge by using built-in Merge libraries. Try UXPin Merge for free.

Try UXPin Merge

Paper Prototyping: The 10-Minute Practical Guide

In the high-tech digital UX design world, pen and paper can still be the preferred choices for fast low-fidelity prototyping. Contrary to assumptions, UX teams spend a lot of time away from the computer, writing on sticky notes, whiteboards, notepads, and adding annotations to paper prototypes.

The more planning and preparation designers can do before sitting down at the computer, the quicker they can design wireframes, mockups, and prototypes. Paper prototyping is a crucial part of the early UX design thinking process because it fosters collaboration, allowing designers to explore lots of ideas at a minimal cost.

With UXPin, design and development teams can jump straight from paper prototypes to high-fidelity prototyping, significantly accelerating the design process. Build consistent, high-quality digital experiences. Sign up for a free trial and explore UXPin’s prototyping features today!

What is Paper Prototyping?

Paper prototyping is the process of developing ideas and designing user flows using hand-sketched “screens” that represent a digital product. Paper prototypes test on a high-level user experience rather than interaction design.

Paper prototypes are low-fidelity because they don’t have any functionality. For this reason, paper prototypes designers rarely share paper prototypes outside of the department.

The primary goal of paper prototyping is to map our information architecture and visualize user flows.

Design teams often lay paper screens on a desk or flow and imagine how real users would navigate to reach an end goal. The designs are rudimentary and usually sketched in black and white. Content is limited, with only headlines and call to action links displaying any legible text.

Sometimes, teams will build a mock iPhone or Android device using a piece of cardboard to simulate swipes, scrolls, and other basic functionality. These mock devices also allow designers to see how their designs might look within the confines of a mobile phone—especially useful if you’re designing a mobile app.

While the main benefit of paper prototyping is speed, some designers use tools like UI Stencils to design accurate, aesthetically pleasing screen layouts—vital if you plan to present paper prototypes to stakeholders or testing participants.

UXPin’s journey started with a similar paper prototyping product called Web Kit. A paper pad paired with a design tool that automatically turns paper prototypes into wireframes. UXPin has evolved into an end-to-end prototyping solution, allowing you to create prototypes that are production-ready from the start. Try UXPin for free.

Paper Prototyping Digitally

With tools like reMarkable and Apple Pencil, teams can collaborate remotely while enjoying the speed and versatility of the physical paper experience.

Using digital sketch tools can accelerate the paper prototyping process. Designers can make changes faster (without needing to redraw a screen), attach detailed notes, and upload finished prototypes instantly to design tools like UXPin to build high-fidelity prototypes or go with wireframing.

Paper prototyping digitally also reduces paper and plastic waste, which is better for the environment :)

Advantages and Disadvantages of Paper Prototyping

Aside from speed and flexibility, there are several advantages and disadvantages to paper prototyping.

Here are some of the pros and cons of paper prototyping from our free eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Prototyping.

Advantages:

Rapid iteration — It’s easier to discard a paper design that took 5 minutes vs. a digital mockup that you spent more than an hour perfecting.
Low cost — Paper is cheap, and even additional tools and kits won’t break the bank.
Increased creativity — The freedom of pencil and paper fosters experimentation and new ideas. Design tools have their place in the design process but can stifle creativity in the early design stages.
Team-building — Paper prototyping is a rare opportunity where teams get together in a creative environment. Working with pen and paper brings out child-like energy, which can help form bonds and strengthen coworker relationships.
Minimal learning curve — Everyone can sketch ideas, making paper prototyping a great way to involve other departments like marketing, development, and stakeholders.
Documentation — Paper prototypes serve as excellent documentation. Designers can make notes and outline ideas to reference throughout the project. They’re excellent UX artifacts that can even double as study notes for team members to refer to later.

Disadvantages:

No user reactions — With no user feedback, it’s difficult to know whether or not your ideas will work. Even if you test your paper prototypes with participants, the feedback will be limited.
Inaccurate feedback — Outside of UX teams, paper prototypes might be challenging to interpret, limiting any accurate or meaningful feedback.
Potentially unnecessary — With rapid prototyping tools like UXPin, paper prototyping might add additional, unnecessary steps to the design process. UXPin comes with pre-made design systems, so designers can quickly drag-and-drop high-fidelity elements to design and edit working prototypes quickly.

Sign up for a 14-day trial and see how quickly you can turn paper design concepts into high-fidelity prototypes that function like the final product using UXPin.

When to Paper Prototype

Jake Knapp of Google says that “paper prototyping is a waste of time“—but admits that paper prototyping is useful for early-stage conceptualizing.

Once you move from paper to digital, there’s no reason to return. Some designers might return to paper prototyping for new features or a product redesign. But even then, returning to paper prototyping might be unnecessary.

That said, paper prototyping is perfect for early-stage conceptualizing. Its speed, ease, and simplicity make it accessible to all teams (including non-designers) while fostering experimentation and creativity—something you can’t achieve with a digital canvas.

Paper prototypes are ideal for:

Brainstorming meetings and sessions
Basic internal user testing early on

How to Paper Prototype

Paper prototyping is the fun part of product design. It’s an opportunity for team members to brainstorm and sketch ideas.

Don’t worry about how beautiful your sketches look. Even the best UX designers aren’t brilliant sketch artists! The goal is to visualize your ideas and get the creative juices flowing.

Creating a paper prototype involves three main steps:

1. Prepare Materials

Gather materials like paper, pens, markers, sticky notes, and scissors. You may also use a whiteboard or large sheets of paper to sketch user interfaces.

2. Sketch Interfaces

Draw basic screens, user interfaces, and key components of the design on separate pieces of paper. Represent user flows by arranging these sketches in sequence.

3. Simulate Interaction

Lay out the sketches in the order of user interaction. Simulate the user experience by manually switching between sketches based on user actions, gathering feedback to refine the design.

For a detailed guide, check out UXPin’s article on prototyping.

6 Tips to Building Paper Prototypes

Use printer paper and cheap pencils/pens. Ruled or line pads often stifle creativity as designers get side-tracked drawing between the lines rather than developing lots of ideas.
Start with a warm-up! Sometimes it takes a few sketches to loosen up and get into the flow. Crazy eights is a fantastic paper prototyping method to design many versions of the same screen fast. After a couple of crazy eights rounds, you’ll have many ideas to expand on.
Prototype mobile-first or progressive enhancement. Start with the smallest screen and adjust the layout as you scale the viewport (this applies to mobile and web design. Scaling up is much easier than scaling down because you prioritize content and avoid elaborate desktop layouts that don’t translate to mobile. Side note: UXPin’s Auto Layout lets you automatically resize, fit, and fill your designs. A handy feature for mobile-first design.
Stick to one sketch per screen (a piece of paper). Paper prototyping requires you to create user flows by placing pieces of paper in sequences. You’ll also switch these around or add new screens. If you have more than one screen on a piece of paper, you lose this speed and flexibility.
Iterate as the ideas come to mind. The goal is quantity, not quality. When you create lots of paper prototype ideas, you often end up taking bits from each to get the final result—like a Lego set, but with paper.
Planning is crucial for a successful paper prototyping session! Ensure you have enough pens (black fine-tipped markers work best), paper, scissors, glue, post-it notes, index cards, tape, cardboard, and anything else you think your specific project might need. A whiteboard and marker are also great for outlining user flows collaboratively. Pro tip—assign the job of preparing your paper prototyping to an arts & crafts enthusiast! Every team has at least one, and they always make sure you have more than enough of everything you need!

Testing & Presenting Paper Prototypes

Testing & presenting paper prototypes outside of the UX department is always tricky. The stakeholders or usability participants have to “imagine” what will happen, which can confuse or divert focus from what you’re trying to present. Nevertheless, a study by Jakob Nielsen found that 75% of usability issues can be identified with simple, low-fidelity prototypes like paper ones.

Here are some tips for presenting and testing paper prototypes:

Designate one person other than the presenter as play the “human computer” or product simulator – The person playing the human-computer will simulate scrolling, swiping, navigating to different screens, and other functionality.
Rehearse – Rehearsing is essential so that the presenter and simulator are in sync. The presenter can work out a good cadence for the simulator to keep up with the presentation.
Follow standard usability test best practices – Standards like using a minimum of 5 users and recording the tests still apply. You can download our free Guide to Usability Testing for more understanding of usability standards and practices.
If you’re giving users a paper prototype to inspect, ensure you provide guidance and annotations, so they know where to focus and what they’re supposed to test.

Prototyping in UXPin

Whether you’re building a mobile application or a new website, UXPin provides designers with tools to build advanced prototypes; most leading design tools simply can’t!

Don’t take our word for it! Sign up for a free 14-day trial and test UXPin’s powerful prototyping features for your next project.

Try UXPin for free

11 Best Material UI Alternatives

Material UI, developed and maintained by MUI, is a popular React component library that implements Google’s Material Design guidelines. It offers a comprehensive set of reusable and customizable components, such as buttons, cards, menus, form elements, predefined styles, and themes.

The library promotes a modular and structured approach to building user interfaces, enabling developers to create visually consistent and responsive designs. With Material UI, developers can streamline their front-end development process and deliver intuitive and visually appealing web apps.

Use Material UI’s React components for prototyping and testing your design without the need of translating pixels into code. Discover how smooth prototyping can be. Try UXPin Merge for free.

Ant Design

Best for: web applications, cross-platform applications, native apps

The Ant Design library is a comprehensive UI component library developed by Ant Design that offers a wide range of reusable and well-documented components for building high-quality applications. It follows the principles of the Ant Design system, emphasizing a clean and minimalist design aesthetic with a focus on usability and accessibility.

The library also provides powerful features like internationalization support, theming capabilities, and responsive design, making it a popular choice among developers for creating professional and user-friendly interfaces.

Developers can quickly create consistent and visually appealing interfaces by leveraging its extensive collection of components, including forms, tables, navigation menus, and more.

The Ant Design system also offers libraries for mobile and charts, giving product teams a comprehensive set of components and patterns for a wide variety of cross-platform applications.

React-Bootstrap

Best for: web applications

React-Bootstrap is a widely used React UI library for building responsive web applications with React. It combines the power of React’s component-based architecture with Bootstrap’s flexibility and styling capabilities, offering a comprehensive set of pre-designed and customizable components.

React-Bootstrap provides a range of UI elements such as buttons, forms, modals, navigation menus, and more, allowing developers to rapidly create visually appealing and functional interfaces.

React-Bootstrap’s detailed docs and active community support simplify web development by providing reusable and well-tested components, enabling developers to focus on building robust and user-friendly applications.

Fluent UI

Best for: web applications, iOS & Android applications, native apps, cross-platform applications

Fluent UI is a robust and comprehensive design system developed by Microsoft that provides reusable components and styling options for building cross-platform and mobile apps. The library follows the principles of Fluent Design, focusing on clarity, content prioritization, and smooth animations.

It offers a consistent and cohesive experience across different platforms and devices, making it suitable for many cross-platform and mobile projects.

With its extensive documentation and active community, Fluent UI empowers teams to build intuitive and accessible user interfaces that align with Microsoft’s design language. From buttons and forms to complex data grids and charts, Fluent UI provides the necessary tools to deliver delightful and user-centered experiences.

Read about the differences between Material UI and Fluent UI.

Carbon Design System

Best for: web applications, iOS & Android applications, native apps, cross-platform applications

Built on the principles of IBM’s design philosophy, Carbon focuses on simplicity, clarity, and purposeful interactions. It provides a range of components, from buttons and forms to data visualizations and icons, enabling designers and developers to create intuitive and visually appealing interfaces.

With its modular and flexible architecture, the Carbon Design System promotes reusability and scalability, making it suitable for large-scale enterprise applications and smaller projects. The system’s documentation and resources empower teams to maintain design consistency and streamline collaboration.

Tailwind CSS

Best for: web applications

The Tailwind CSS library enables developers to rapidly build custom user interfaces using a utility-first CSS framework. It provides a comprehensive set of pre-defined utility classes, eliminating the need for writing custom CSS styles.

The library supports React, Vue, and HTML. Developers can easily apply these utility classes to HTML elements, giving them granular control over the appearance and behavior of their UI components.

Tailwind CSS promotes a modular approach to styling, where devs can combine classes to create unique and responsive designs. It offers utilities for layout, typography, colors, spacing, and more, allowing developers to create consistent and visually appealing interfaces with minimal effort.

Semantic UI

Best for: web applications

Semantic UI is a versatile front-end framework that offers a wide range of semantic and intuitive components for creating user interfaces. It provides a comprehensive collection of pre-designed UI elements for web applications, including buttons, forms, menus, cards, and modals.

The framework follows a natural language naming convention, making it user-friendly and easy to understand. Developers can leverage Semantic UI’s extensive set of CSS classes to build visually appealing and responsive designs quickly. The library supports React, Meteor, Ember, and Angular front-end frameworks.

Semantic UI supports theming and customization, allowing developers to customize the appearance of their UI components to align with their project’s branding. With its intuitive syntax and detailed documentation, Semantic UI is a valuable tool for designing and developing modern web interfaces.

Foundation

Best for: web applications, email templates, landing pages

Foundation is a responsive front-end framework with CSS and JavaScript components for building modern, mobile-friendly websites. It offers a comprehensive toolkit with a modular approach, allowing developers to customize and tailor their designs to meet specific project requirements.

Devs can easily create responsive grids, navigation menus, forms, buttons, and other UI elements that adapt seamlessly across different screen sizes. The framework also includes a powerful JavaScript library that enables interactive features and smooth animations.

With its extensive documentation and active community support, Foundation empowers developers to create visually appealing and highly functional web interfaces.

Chakra UI

Best for: web applications

Chakra UI is a modern and accessible React component library for streamlining user interface development. The library supports several frameworks, including React, Next.js, Meteor, and Gatsby, to name a few.

The project was founded by Segun Adebayo of Nigeria, making it one of the most prominent open-source component libraries to come out of Africa.

Chakra UI provides pre-designed components and utility functions, allowing developers to create visually appealing and responsive websites. Developers can leverage Chakra UI’s customizable and reusable components, such as buttons, forms, cards, and navigation elements, to design intuitive and accessible user interfaces.

The library also focuses on accessibility by adhering to WCAG standards, ensuring that the created interfaces are usable by individuals with disabilities. Chakra UI’s simplicity, flexibility, and robust documentation make it a popular choice among developers looking to build efficient and visually stunning React applications.

Bulma

Best for: web applications, landing pages

Bulma is a lightweight and modern CSS framework based on Flexbox, providing a flexible and responsive grid system and a set of ready-to-use UI components. The framework’s intuitive class naming convention supports quick and efficient styling, while its modular architecture ensures scalability and customization.

Bulma’s simplicity, extensive documentation, and community support make it a popular choice for projects of all sizes. Whether you’re building a landing page, a dashboard, or an eCommerce site, Bulma provides a solid foundation for building aesthetically pleasing and functional interfaces.

Styled Components

Best for: web applications, landing pages

Styled Components is a popular JavaScript library that allows developers to write CSS directly in their JavaScript code using tagged template literals. It provides a way to encapsulate styles within components, making them more maintainable and reusable.

Styled Components is widely used in the React ecosystem and offers seamless integration with popular UI frameworks and libraries. Developers can create dynamic and responsive styles by leveraging the power of JavaScript, including the ability to access component props and states. The library offers many features, including support for CSS-in-JS, automatic vendor prefixing, and theme management.

PrimeReact

Best for: web applications, landing pages

PrimeReact is a comprehensive UI component library for React applications, offering ready-to-use components and advanced features. It provides a wide range of UI elements, including buttons, inputs, tables, modals, and charts, for various digital products.

PrimeReact follows a responsive design approach, ensuring components adapt well to different screen sizes and devices. The library also offers powerful features, such as data binding, filtering, sorting, and pagination, making it suitable for building data-intensive applications.

By leveraging PrimeReact’s pre-built components and features, developers can save time and effort, resulting in faster development cycles and improved user experiences. The library is regularly updated, ensuring compatibility with the latest React versions and providing ongoing support and bug fixes.

High-Quality Prototypes with UXPin’s Code-to-Design Methodology

UXPin’s Merge technology enables product teams to import these and other open-source design systems into UXPin’s design editor so designers can prototype and test using code components.

Use the same components in the design process as you would use to develop the final product. Build immersive prototype experiences for user testing and stakeholders, providing meaningful feedback to iterate and improve concepts. Share a single source of truth across the product development environment, from early-stage design to development and the final product. Try UXPin Merge for free.

Try UXPin Merge

Join our Free Webinar: “Removing Friction from Design System Workflows”

Collaboration doesn’t end at the design handoff stage, right? Yet, seldomly is it discussed what happens next. We’re inviting you to a webinar that will show you how enterprise teams like Porsche, IBM, and Salesforce collaborate to boost their design system adoption and scale consistency.

Spoiler alert! You can replicate those strategies to amplify collaboration at your organization. Join us on Wednesday, May 29th, for a free webinar: “Removing Friction from Design System Workflows.”

👉 Save your free spot here.

What will we cover during the webinar?

Wanna ship products faster? Then, you need to master processes and tools that will get you there. This webinar will give you first-hand experience on what you can do to keep the speed of action in a multi-disciplinary team of engineers, designers, and stakeholders.

You’ll learn:

How to empower developers and designers to communicate using live examples
How to increase the adoption of your design system with interactive documentation
How to streamline efficient bug reporting and updating the design system library

👉 Save your spot here.

About the expert

We invited Tomek Sułkowski to host this webinar. He’s a DevRel and a founding engineer of StackBlitz – an in-browser dev environment for building web apps. He helps teams optimize the browser development environment by utilizing a variety of built-in, open-source, and commercial tools.

Prototyping, working with design systems, AI-generated Tailwind components, opening in StackBlitz…
this Product Hunt launch from UXPin has it all 🤌 pic.twitter.com/yq38x6i5oe
— StackBlitz (@stackblitz) March 6, 2024

During the webinar, he will explain how to enhance collaboration between designers and developers, as well as, stay in control of design system adoption with dev environments, version control systems, and design tools.

👉 Save your spot here.

The Benefits of Dark Mode and Why You Should Also Dim the Lights in Your Product

On its most basic level, dark mode turns white backgrounds with black text into black backgrounds with white text. The more you explore dark mode, though, the more design opportunities you will discover.

Why should you bother learning about dark mode designs? Here are a few important reasons to get you motivated.

Discover the power of dark mode with UXPin, the ultimate tool for transforming your design ideas into dynamic, fully functional prototypes. UXPin allows you to effortlessly explore dark mode concepts, bringing them to life in a way that closely mimics the final product. This real-time interaction provides invaluable insights, enabling you to fine-tune your designs to enhance aesthetic appeal and user comfort.

Begin your UXPin journey today with a free trial and see how seamlessly you can convert your dark mode visions into interactive prototypes. Experience the potential of UXPin for yourself — start for free now.

What is dark mode?

Dark mode is a color scheme that uses light-colored text, icons, and user interface elements on a dark background. It’s a popular feature in many apps and operating systems.

Dark mode can often be toggled on and off based on user preference, and some operating systems and applications can automatically switch between dark and light mode based on the time of day or ambient light conditions.

Many popular apps and operating systems have embraced dark mode, incorporating it into their user interface options due to its benefits like eye strain reduction and battery saving. Notably, major operating systems like Windows 10 and 11, macOS, iOS, and Android all offer system-wide dark modes. This setting influences everything from system menus and taskbars to app interfaces, providing a seamless experience across the device.

Dark mode reduces blue light that can interrupt sleep

When it gets dark, your brain naturally begins to produce more melatonin, the chemical that makes you sleepy. Any type of light can disrupt the melatonin levels, so people should ideally avoid all types of light as bedtime approaches. Although no one has found enough evidence to prove it, some studies link exposure to light at night to increased risks for health problems like obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.

Blue light disrupts melatonin secretion more than other types of light. Unfortunately, computer and smartphone screens bathe your eyes in blue light. Comparative research at Harvard shows that exposure to blue light suppresses melatonin for twice as long as other green light.

Harvard says that people should avoid using bright screens about three hours before bed. Considering that many people look at their phone before going to bed, though, few consumers follow this advice.

Night mode produces significantly less blue light than standard screen settings. Ideally, you shouldn’t use any screens leading up to bedtime. If you do, using dark mode should disrupt sleep much less than standard screen modes that use blue light.

As screentime grows, eyes need more rest

If people only used websites and smartphone apps for short periods during the day, they probably wouldn’t need the benefits of dark mode. Studies show that the amount of time that people spend focused on screens keeps growing, though. Dark mode could serve an important role in curbing the negative health effects without telling consumers to put down their devices—designers and developers don’t want to do that for obvious reasons!

On average, people pick up their phones 58 times per day. Most of the interactions are rather brief:

70% of sessions last less than two minutes.
25% are between two and 10 minutes.
Only 5% of sessions last more than 10 minutes.

Cumulatively, though, all of those interactions add up to 3 hours and 15 minutes of screen time.

These statistics only apply to smartphone use during workdays. Now that more people use computers during work, you can safely assume that many of them can add at least 6.5 hours of screen time to the 3 hours 15 minutes that they spend looking at their phones. Even a conservative estimate shows that people expose themselves to the bright, blue light of computer screens for more than half of the waking day.

Dark mode extends battery life

Smartphone and laptop sellers often use long battery lives as selling points that will convince consumers to spend more money on devices. Battery life certainly matters in a mobile device, but users probably have much more control than they think about how long charges will last.

When testers compared the battery life of iPhones, they found that they could play video for 15 hours on the phone using light mode while the dark mode phone kept working for 20 hours. They got a 33% increase in battery life just by switching to dark mode.

The researchers point out that only smartphones with OLED screens will get the benefit of extended battery life. LCD screens use about the same amount of energy regardless of the type of light they use, so they probably won’t work longer while in dark mode.

You can explore more design options with dark mode

Dark mode gives designers more opportunities to explore design options for their products. A white screen can make it difficult to view certain colors. Light blue, for example, may force you to concentrate on text much carefully against a light background than a dark one.

The move toward darker designs has been much more prevalent in mobile apps than websites. Many app designers like to dim the lights because the darker environment:

Increases contrast between backgrounds, oversized images, and text.
Makes it easier for image-heavy designs to look professional.
Younger people who play a lot of video games have gotten used to dark color schemes, so they expect to find a similar aesthetic used by apps.

Finally, there’s no denying that a black background makes certain colors pop! When you dim the background—or start using completely black backgrounds—you can make light blue, pink, yellow, and other colors stand out. These colors would blend into a white background, but they look stunning against black.

Consumers want the option to choose dark mode

Maybe you don’t care a lot about the effects of blue light, extending battery life, or exploring designs that work better on a black background. All of those points aside, you still care about making your products popular. Unpopular products don’t survive, which could mean that your job title doesn’t survive long, either.

Over the last few years, there has been a significant trend toward dark mode. Tech giants like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Apple, and Twitter have adopted dark mode options, creating an important trend within the design industry. About 70% of software engineers prefer working in Dark Theme IDEs, so it seems natural for them to create tools with dark backgrounds and colored text.

Ultimately, though, the consumer matters most. As more people start watching videos online, dark backgrounds have become standard on websites like YouTube. In August 2019, 2.08 billion people worldwide said that they watched videos on their smartphones. When it comes to viewing videos on computers, 1.87 billion people admitted to it during the same month. Interestingly, a much smaller number (1.64 million) said that they watched online videos via their smart TVs.

Related articles: Dark Mode Feature as an Ultimate Solution in Mobile App Design

Light mode vs dark mode benefits

Both modes have their place depending on user preferences, the ambient environment, and specific use cases. Many modern devices and apps offer the ability to switch between modes based on the time of day or user settings, providing optimal comfort and usability across different scenarios.

Light Mode Benefits

Better Readability in Bright Conditions: Light mode tends to work better in brightly lit environments, making it easier to read text on a stark white background.
Familiarity and Preference: Many users find light mode more visually appealing and easier to use during the day due to its resemblance to daylight conditions.
Better Color Accuracy: Light mode displays colors more vibrantly and accurately, which is particularly important for tasks that require precise color discrimination.

Dark Mode Benefits

Reduced Eye Strain in Low Light: Dark mode is easier on the eyes in low-light conditions, reducing glare and helping to minimize eye strain during nighttime use.
Energy Efficiency on OLED Screens: On OLED and AMOLED screens, dark mode can significantly reduce power consumption as these displays turn off black pixels completely.
Aesthetically Pleasing: Many users find dark mode stylish and modern, offering a different visual experience that is often perceived as less harsh than light mode.
Potentially Better Sleep: Reducing exposure to bright screens, especially in the evenings, can help decrease blue light exposure, which may improve sleep quality.

Explore more design concepts with UXPin prototypes

Dark mode isn’t the perfect solution for every product’s design. Since consumers and developers like having the option to switch to dark mode, though, it makes sense for more designers to test dark mode concepts.

UXPin gives you an easy way to explore dark mode concepts by turning designs into fully functional prototypes. UXPin prototypes respond to interactions just like their final products will, giving you opportunities to tweak your dark mode versions to make sure they look attractive and make users more comfortable. Start your free UXPin trial to see how easily you can turn your dark mode designs into interactive prototypes. Try UXPin for free.

Try UXPin for free

5 Amazing Blog Layouts for a Beautiful Blog Design

A blog layout refers to the structure and organization of content on a blog — a webpage that features various types of content, from paragraphs of text to high-quality images or eye catching graphics. Blog content can be about company updates, how-to manuals, personal stories, and more.

From a design perspective, a blog is often optimized for readability and navigation, with features such as categories, tags, archives, and search functionality to help users find content of interest. Additionally, blogs often incorporate images, videos, and animations to make user experience more enjoyable and unique.

In this article, we will go through the most important elements of the blog layout and we will show you a list of best blog designs that you can copy.

Create a well-optimized and user-friendly blog layout with UXPin Merge – drag-and-drop UI builder that makes web design extremely easy. Choose components, arrange them on the canvas, and then, change their properties to create a unique UI that reflects your brand. Try UXPin Merge for free.

Design UI with code-backed components.

Use the same components in design as in development. Keep UI consistency at scale.

What is a blog?

A blog is a type of website or section of a website that is regularly updated with new content, typically in the form of articles, posts, or entries. These entries are often displayed in reverse chronological order, with the newest content appearing first.

Blogs can cover a wide range of topics and purposes, including personal journals, professional insights, news updates, tutorials, reviews, and more. They often provide a platform for individuals or organizations to share their thoughts, expertise, or experiences with an audience.

Overall, blogs play a significant role in web design as they provide a dynamic and engaging way for creators to connect with their audience and share content online.

What to include in a blog layout?

A blog layout can have various design elements that influence navigation and user experience. Le’s go through some of them.

Header

The header is situated on the top of the page. It usually contains the blog title or logo, along with navigation menu that features links to other pages of the blog, such as blog homepage, about page, contact page, and blog categories.

By appearing at the top of the page, the header provides a consistent visual element throughout the blog. This consistency helps users orient themselves and reinforces the blog’s brand identity across all pages.

Additionally, the header is often the first thing visitors see when they land on the blog. A well-designed header creates a positive first impression, drawing visitors in and encouraging them to explore further.

Blog content area

This is where the blog articles are displayed. Each post typically includes a title, the author’s name, publication date, content (text, images, videos), and social sharing buttons.

A well-designed content area enhances the overall user experience by making it easy for visitors to read and engage with the blog posts. Clear typography, appropriate use of white space, and sufficient contrast between text and background contribute to readability.

Moreover, content areas are important for boosting search engine optimization. Including relevant keywords in the content areas, such as in the body text, subheadings, and meta descriptions, helps search engines understand the topic of the blog post. This increases the likelihood of the blog post appearing in search engine results pages (SERPs) when users search for those keywords.

Search engines prioritize content that provides value to users and is well-organized. Content areas that offer insightful, informative, and well-structured content are more likely to rank higher in search results. Additionally, well-organized content makes it easier for search engine crawlers to index and understand the content, which can positively impact SEO.

Sidebar

The sidebar is located either on the left or right side of the main content area and often contains additional elements such as:

Search bar — Allows users to search for specific content within the blog.
Blog categories and tags — Help users navigate and filter content based on topics or themes.
Recent articles — Lists links to the most recent blog posts.
Featured articles — Highlights links to the blog’s most popular or trending content.
Call to action links — Allows users to perform an action that’s desired by the blog owner, such as subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed or email newsletter, located here to maximize conversions.
Social media links — Links to the blog’s social media profiles for users to follow or share content.

Footer

The footer typically contains links to important pages, such as the privacy policy, terms of service, copyright information, and contact details. It may also include additional navigation links or widgets.

Footers contribute to the overall design consistency of the blog by providing a uniform layout and visual style across all pages. Consistent placement of elements such as navigation links, copyright information, and links to other pages reinforces the blog’s brand identity and professionalism.

5 Examples of blog layouts

We gathered a collection of successful blog designs to show you how to create your own blog design.

Animalz

A perfect example of a minimalist design a business blog of content marketing agency — Animalz. With a black and white color scheme, this blog is structured like an online newspaper (matrix web structure). It has a prominent blog post with a featured image at the center of the page, and the rest of the articles are positioned as cards.

You can use MUI components that are built-in UXPin if you want to create a similar blog. Take a menu component and put it on the canvas, then arrange a couple of cards in responsive layout structure.

Zen habits

This is a lifestyle blog example that knows well its target audience — individuals interested in personal development, mindfulness, simplicity, productivity, and minimalism. Zen Habits, founded by Leo Babauta, focuses on helping people cultivate habits and lifestyles that promote mindfulness, and overall well-being.

The blog structure reflects those values. With an ample use of white space, elegant typography, and minimalist color scheme, the website design evokes the feelings of serenity, focus, and peace.

Our trial kit contains a similar blog card template that you may use as a landing page of your blog. Like in Zen habits, it features the most recent article. You can quickly add a button with a call to action at the end that makes readers see more articles from the author.

Huberman Lab

A blog can also feature a list of podcasts and Huberman’s Lab is a great example of that. Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist and professor at Stanford University who is known for his work on brain plasticity, neuroscience, and optimizing human performance.

Besides its minimalistic color palette, you should note an excellent search option on this blog. It’s very user-friendly and helps you find the right information without scrolling through the entire archive. The blog has also well-thought-out categories to make the target audience focus on the topics they’re interested in.

Travelfloss

People write travel blogs for various reasons, often driven by personal passion, professional interests, or a combination of both. That’s why we included a well-known travel blog in this article. Travelfloss is a blog with travel tips and gear reviews. It’s a great blog for anyone who wants to learn about real travel experience.

They have a well-made navigation menu that features their social media accounts and a great footer with the best links that make the site easy to consume. Every blog entry has lots of eye-catching photographs that make reading more enjoyable.

What also stands out as a design element are tags that also aid navigation. Travelfloss is easy to replicate if you’re looking for a user-friendly blog template.

Sixteen Ventures

Here’s another example of a business blog. Lincoln Murphy, the author behind Sixteen Ventures is a Customer Success expert who consults the teams wanting to improve their customer experience. At first, his blog looks like any other WordPress theme, but it a well-designed sidebar that we haven’t seen so far.

If you want to advertise other ventures to your audience, a sidebar is a great solution. You can promote your newsletter there, invite people to listen to a podcast or sign up for your course.

Blog layout best practices

Here are seven best practices for blog layout design:

Clear and intuitive navigation: Make sure that visitors can easily find their way around your blog. Use a clear and intuitive navigation menu that prominently displays categories, tags, and other important sections.
Mobile responsiveness: With an increasing number of users accessing websites from mobile devices, it’s crucial to ensure that your blog layout is responsive and looks good on smartphones and tablets. Opt for a responsive design that adjusts seamlessly to different screen sizes and orientations.
Readable typography: Choose a legible font for your blog posts, headings, and navigation elements. Pay attention to font size, line spacing, and contrast to ensure optimal readability, especially on smaller screens. Aim for a font size of at least 16 pixels for body text.
Visual hierarchy: Use visual cues such as headings, subheadings, bold text, and bullet points to create a clear hierarchy of information. This helps readers scan your content quickly and find the most important points. Employ whitespace generously to enhance readability and create a sense of balance.
Engaging multimedia content: Incorporate multimedia elements such as images, videos, infographics, and interactive widgets to enhance your blog posts and make them more engaging. Visual content can break up long blocks of text, illustrate concepts, and capture readers’ attention.
Consistent branding: Maintain a consistent visual identity across your blog, including colors, typography, imagery, and logo placement. Consistent branding helps reinforce your blog’s identity and makes it easier for visitors to recognize and remember your brand.
Optimized loading speed: Optimize your blog layout for fast loading times to provide a smooth user experience. Minimize unnecessary elements, use efficient coding practices, and optimize images and multimedia files to reduce page load times. A fast-loading blog not only improves user satisfaction but also contributes to better search engine rankings.

By following these best practices, you can create a blog layout that not only looks appealing but also provides a user-friendly experience, encourages engagement, and supports your blogging goals.

Create a blog layout in UXPin

A well-designed blog prioritizes readability and navigation, offering features like categories, tags, and search functionality to guide users seamlessly through the content. By incorporating multimedia elements such as images, videos, and animations, blogs enhance the overall user experience, making it both enjoyable and engaging.

For those looking to streamline the design process, tools like UXPin Merge offer intuitive drag-and-drop functionality, allowing you to create custom UI designs with ease. With the ability to select components, arrange them on the canvas, and customize their properties, UXPin Merge empowers you to bring your vision to life effortlessly.

Begin your journey towards a well-optimized and user-friendly blog layout today with UXPin Merge. Try it for free.

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DesignOps – How to Improve Your Design Workflow and Operations

With the fierce competition on the market, hiring top design talent is no easy feat. However, bringing a group of experienced, skilled people into one place is only part of success. Among others, to build a thriving product design team you must also invest in design operations (also known as DesignOps).

We’ve written a whole ebook about DesignOps that will help you understand the role and see if you would be great as a DesignOps leader. Get it here: DesignOps 101: Guide to Design Operations.

In this article, we’ll explain what DesignOps is and how you can use it to improve the digital design system in your organization. We’ll discuss areas such as cross-team collaboration, goal setting, and information exchange systems, along with using the right DesignOps software.

A great software piece that supports your design operations is UXPin. Together with its Merge technology, it helps you scale design to the extraordinary level. Start building prototypes by dragging and dropping real building blocks of your app and streamline design. Check out UXPin Merge.

Reach a new level of prototyping

Design with interactive components coming from your team’s design system.

What is DesignOps?

You may have heard about DevOps, but what is DesignOps?

DesignOps (short for Design Operations) is the optimization of design processes, people, and technologies to streamline product design and add business value. Among others, it circles around:

building a team of people with the right skillset and common purpose,
reducing operational inefficiencies, such as miscommunication or silos,
and – perhaps most importantly – building efficient design workflows.

DesignOps is a relatively new term, which is why you might be wondering – how did it come to life?

In the past, designers used to wear many hats. They did the UX research, wrote UX stories, wireframing, and more. While this approach might still work well for some teams, it is unproductive at scale. Here’s where DesignOps comes in, helping orchestrate teamwork and building clear structure and roles.

That being said, DesignOps isn’t an isolated, ‘design-team-only’ exercise reserved for design organizations. It requires lots of information sharing with other stakeholders (especially, software developers). By following a set of practices, your designers can enhance the quality of these interactions, focus on effective goal completion, and free the time for other initiatives.

Why is design operations gaining more ground?

For starters, both business and user requirements are becoming more complex (which also means that clients are also becoming more unforgiving). According to a report by PwC, one in three customers will leave a business after just one bad customer experience. Unsurprisingly, the challenge to keep up with client expectations also accelerates product development life cycles. And, as teams try to keep up with a growing workload, there’s the risk of miscommunication among designers and between designers and developers.

Teams might work in isolation on the basis of inconsistent requirements, which negatively affects the delivery timelines and, ultimately, the UX. DesignOps practices help companies overcome these bottlenecks and create harmony between design and development teams.

Let’s now take a closer look into the role of DesignOps Management.

The Role of DesignOps

The main role of design operations management is to protect the time of the design team so that they can focus on doing their jobs without obstacles or distractions. You can read more about it in our DesignOps 101 ebook. Here is how a DesignOps role plays out day-to-day:

Operations management

This role involves creating a clear design roadmap of what the long-term goals of the design team are and how they can be achieved. It is also their job to assess the headcount of the design team and identify any skill gaps.

Process design

DesignOps plan and manage the design process by creating design systems and mapping out the design tools that the team needs. They create the frameworks of how the design team should collaborate with product teams and any other team within the entire organization.

Project management

They are in charge of design workflows, assign projects, set timelines, and remove any bottlenecks. The DesignOps team schedules daily standup meetings to find out the progress of design projects. They also organize and run design sprints.

Creating a communication strategy

The design operations manager acts as the liaison between the design team and the rest of the organization. They evangelize the value of design and set team meeting agendas.

The design leader ensures communication flow with product managers and a product development team. DesignOps creates a system for storing all the files and resources that the design team needs for easy retrieval.

Onboarding new hires

They orient new staff, train them, and ensure that they fit into the design team. Hiring new design staff, such as UI or UX designers, is also part of their mandate.

Building the culture of the design team

The DesignOps team organizes workshops and training for the professional development of the design team. They also provide professional and emotional support for designers within their team and organize team-building activities to create a sense of community in the design team.

Budget allocation and control

DesignOps establishes how much it costs to run the design team and justifies these costs. Once the budget is approved, they are in charge of how it is distributed within the design team.

Legal

Working with the legal team to create NDAs and participant release forms that are used during user testing.

Managing the procurement process

Liaising with the procurement department to streamline how the design team makes purchasing decisions.

IT and Security

Coming up with the technological roadmap of the design team and working with the IT department to ensure the compatibility and security of design tools.

Tips to improving your design workflow and operations

With the above in mind, let’s now discuss some tips that will help you improve design operation practices in your organization.

1. Let your designers focus on designing

While it might seem like a no-brainer, as mentioned earlier, some companies still expect designers to play multiple roles. Sometimes, a single designer conducts user research, designs the information architecture, UI, and handles UX writing.

While this approach might be effective if you’re a small team or an early-stage startup, bear in mind that it’s not a scalable approach. In the long run, burdening designers with other tasks may hamper the quality of their work.

2. Check the efficiency of your design process

Organizations use various product design and development methods. Some organizations might follow the Design Thinking process, while others might focus primarily on Google’s Design Sprints.

The bottom line is making sure you’re applying the best methodology out there.

With DesignOps, you can find and eliminate inefficiencies in the design workflow. This lets your design team achieve more with less time and resources. As a result, by optimizing work and team performance, you might avoid unnecessary hiring.

3. Use tools for effective remote product design collaborations

While, at small organizations, collaboration between designers might happen organically, it’s not the case with larger (and, especially, remote) teams. To collaborate effectively, it’s important to equip your designers and other product development team members with the right set of tools. Here’s where DesignOps software brings immense value.

UXPin’s Merge is one such tool. For starters, your designers can use UI components imported from your software developers’ Git repo or Storybook. Instead of spending time on creating prototypes from scratch, they can design directly with elements made with real-life code. This way, your team can focus more time on the actual design and maintain consistency with the coded product.

That being said, tools are just part of the puzzle – the remaining element is following the right communication practices, which we discuss next.

4. Establish collaboration routines

Collaboration routines, such as daily standups or weekly meetings, which are usually performed by agile teams, encourage your designers to share regular status updates and – if needed – ask for support.

An example of how you can instill effective collaboration routines comes from none else but Google. Sophia Chiu, who started off as an intern and now works as an Interaction Designer for the tech giant, says that routines helped her find common ground with the rest of the team

Each week, UX specialists have the opportunity to present their design iterations in front of others and engage in a brainstorming and feedback session. After working in a modest group, they are then given the option to share their designs with the entire, cross-functional product development department.

This is just one of the many ways you can create an open communication flow among your team members.

5. Make sure that all designers have a clear career path for progression

While hiring people with the right skillset is not an easy task, retaining them is even harder. Fortunately, DesignOps practices can help to tackle these challenges by creating clear career development paths. As the design process matures, the team can feature more specialized roles which will enable designers to acquire new skills. All the while, more experienced individuals will get the opportunity to be promoted to more senior roles.

6. Encourage designers to work collaboratively

Pair programming is frequently used among developers as a way to reduce bugs and errors. In DesignOps, designers can adopt similar models to enhance the efficiency of the design work.

Here are three such pair designing models.

Generator and synthesizer

In this model, two designers are paired together to try to generate as many designs as they can. At the same time, they evaluate and synthesize them to create the best one. One designer, i.e., the ‘navigator’, focuses on brainstorming and generating ideas. Meanwhile, the other designer acts as the ‘synthesizer’, and analyzes and raises questions to validate the designs. This approach can help the pair of designers to come up with ideas and evaluate them effectively.

Cross-disciplinary pairing

This method is appropriate for product development team members who specialize in different disciplines. It can be used by both designers and non-designers. For example, when designing for an extremely specialized sector, the designer can pair with a domain expert who can provide valuable insights for the design.

A designer can also pair with a front-end engineer in the so-called cross-disciplinary pairing. Such a cross-functional team exercise will provide the designer with an opportunity to experiment with the real-life, coded UI rather than a wireframe.

Pair sketching

Designers can use the pair sketching method to develop wireframes together. In this model, one designer takes the role of the navigator and describes the concept, while the other creates the sketches accordingly. Next, they can switch roles and repeat the same process.

7. Set clear goals for the design team

Clearly communicating the company’s or project’s goals can act as a great motivator for the design team. After all, it helps them to understand the significance of their contribution.

Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are one way of achieving a sense of greater, cross-team purpose.

Individual (i.e., per-employee) OKRs will help your designers see how their work objectives fit as an element of the greater design puzzle. As a result, they’ll know how their work contributes to the overall outcome of the project.

That being said, it’s also important to measure goals’ achievement progress. A metrics dashboard displaying progress within the team will help keep team members motivated and understand where they might be falling behind.

8. Create a cross-team information sharing system

Removing silos is arguably the top most important reason for building out information sharing systems as part of your DesignOps strategy. To illustrate its importance, let’s once again refer to an analogy from the software development operations’ (DevOps) world.

Michael Mazyar of Samanage makes a great point of stating that “within silos, the development team might not report a software bug to operations out of fear of being reprimanded. Without an honest and open information sharing system, workflow is not only delayed, but the potential for misinformation increases.”

The same could potentially happen within your design team, who might not inform others of an ongoing situation. For instance, if they were to encounter a usability glitch, your developers, designers, and operations should all get together to discuss a number or areas, for instance:

Does it cause financial loss?
How does it affect the overall UX?
Is there a risk of user drop-off?
How long would it take to fix & how much would it cost?

With a clear cross-team information communication system, you’ll be able to proactively identify and rectify problems with minimum impact on the end-users.

9. Consider creating a shared vocabulary

A typical content marketing team has a set of editorial guidelines they follow which helps them communicate effectively, and retain the right communication standard. Similarly, design teams should adopt a set of guidelines and a common design language to retain consistency across all their projects.

As an example, Airbnb has adopted a DLS (Design Language System). It consists of a set of components that comply with clearly established principles and patterns. DLS enables all employees to use a shared vocabulary understood by all departments within the organization. This greatly enhances the quality of communication while eliminating ambiguities and discrepancies.

Scale DesignOps with UXPin Merge

The number of challenges that companies face today is growing; customers become more demanding, new products are launched faster, while product life cycles shorten. One of the ways to tackle these challenges is by introducing DesignOps. Not only will it improve your design workflow, but it will also let designers focus on what they do best i.e. design digital products.

All of this will help you build products and services that perfectly correspond to clients’ needs and that are intuitive to use which will positively impact the user experience. If you’re looking for a tool that will improve your design workflow by making collaboration between your designers and software engineers smoother then check out UXPin Merge.

Discover Merge

What is a prototype?

Types of prototypes

Prototype examples you need to see

Example 1: Paper prototype

Example 2: Wireframe

Example 3: Mockup

Example 4: High-fidelity prototype

Example 5: Functional prototype

Example 6: Coded prototype

Create code-first prototype with UXPin

What is unity principle of design ?

How does unity in design enhance user experience?

Conceptual unity vs visual unity

Conceptual Unity

Visual Unity

How to create unified design

Step 1: Fill out a design brief.

Step 2: Conduct a design workshop.

Step 3: Establish a visual style.

Step 4: Gather content.

Step 5: Create a mockup.

Step 6: Get feedback.

Step 7: Hand the design to development.

Practice using unity in design

Paste & Replace

Use New Canvas Sizes

Set up Grid Styles

Access specs with “Get Code” button

User management for project groups

Flexbox for Merge components

Usability improvements

Suggest new features to add to our roadmap

What is a Design System Structure?

How Can You Structure a Design System?

Simple visual design repository

Atomic design

Code-based design system structure

How Do You Choose the Right Design System Structure?

Why UXPin Prefers a Code-Based Design System structure?

What are Color Tokens?

Why Are Color Tokens Important?

How to Access Color Tokens in UXPin

Convert an existing library

Set up a new library

What Can You Do with Color Tokens in UXPin?

A Step Towards Comprehensive Design Tokens

Design UI with code-backed components.

What is Admin UI?

What are Admin UI examples?

WordPress Dashboard

eCommerce Dashboard

What should be in an admin dashboard?

How to design an Admin UI for a React app?

Step 1: Pick UI components.

Step 2: Arrange UI components and change their properties.

Step 3: Set up interactions.

Step 4: Share your admin dashboard with stakeholders for review.

Step 5: Export React code to develop the app.

Design more than Admin UI in UXPin

Design UI with code-backed components.

What is Bootstrap?

When to Use Bootstrap

Examples of Projects Ideal for Bootstrap

Does Bootstrap uses React?

What is React Bootstrap?

Key Features of React Bootstrap

Can Bootstrap Replace React?

What is better — Bootstrap or React Bootstrap?

What is React Bootstrap used for?

Corporate Websites

Blogs

E-commerce Platforms

Admin Dashboards

Social Media Platforms

Educational Platforms

Landing Pages

Use React Bootstrap to Build your App’s UI

What is Design Program Manager?

What are Key Responsibilities of Design Program Managers?

DesignOps at Uber