If you as a UX designer do not pay attention to the concept of design patterns, you are giving away a lot of potential. But if you don't pay attention to code patterns as a developer, you'll be in hot water. Guaranteed.
Patterns help to avoid double work
Most front ends of large websites are still created «page template based». This usually means that many designers still design only templates, such as the start page, overview and detail pages and the related content elements - via wireframes and mockups. If the budget allows it, a style guide or UI documentation will be created in addition to a developer handoff. In most cases, these documents are only valid until the next relaunch of the website.
I think you already know: This procedure is neither efficient nor sustainable. It would be much better to first develop a modular system that provides designers and developers with design & code components, and only then use them to create page templates. The once built components can be used again and again for different templates and also for different projects.
Equal should be treated equal, unequal unequal
The concept of avoiding duplicate work by using the same solutions for the same problems, using components that have already been created and proven, makes sense to pretty much everyone, doesn't it?
Nevertheless, we often meet designers who claim that a design system restricts their creativity. They would like to re-invent the wheel with every project and make everything new and completely different. Thereby they design completely different solutions for identical use cases. How can that be?
For some problems there is only exactly one best solution and we may apply it several times - this saves time and costs and leads to working products that meet customer expectations. A professional is characterized by knowing where it makes sense to invest time, by not wasting time on "no-brainers", and by avoiding unnecessary work by adopting good defaults. Instead, he devotes his full attention to the important conceptual challenges of the project.
A code-based pattern library closes the gap between design and code
Patterns help to close the gap between design and code, which is characterized by misunderstandings and time-consuming incorrect interpretations. It doesn't matter if it's the designer or the developer or both not communicating enough, an interpretation of visual templates is always highly subjective - no designer can show all ineraction states and responsive states unless he uses a code based pattern library :-)
Because code-based design patterns ensure that designers and developers unmistakably use the same components, one as design assets, the other as code snippets.
Using design patterns significantly reduces effort and increases design quality
From our experience so far, we can say that with the help of a "Design/Code Pattern Library" you can save about 50% of the time and effort. This makes previously cost-critical projects realizable and frees up more time for further product improvements.
A reduction in effort is achieved primarily in the following areas:
- technical realization of the frontend
- communication designer - developer
- When new conditions or requirements arise
- by eliminating the need for costly prototyping
- within quality assurance in the post-go-live phase
But the best thing is that patterns not only help to save time and money, but also directly lead to a higher design quality, as the work results created with them are much more consistent due to the coherently related components.
In addition, you get a real "look & feel" of the later application at a very early stage of the project, because user interactions such as hover states, popping accordions and sticky elements can be responsively evaluated. This leads to more control and thus ultimately to more quality.
AtomicKitchen
With AtomicKitchen it is now possible to create a pattern-based atomic design system based on HTML, CSS and Javascript. Try it out! Or ask us for a free demonstration session.
From a style guide created with AtomicKitchen, the code of each design element can be taken.