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As a product designer, you may have used a design system in the past, but have you actually built one yourself? The book Atomic Design by Brad Frost talks about the atomic principle when it comes to creating a design system, and dives into the nitty gritty of how to do that.
The atomic principle refers to creating design elements in a way that mimics chemistry, where atoms are combined to from molecules and molecules come together to form organism. This principle itself is not hard to understand, so my biggest takeaways after reading this book actually come from the many best practices about collaboration and visual design.
Be Agile Rather than Waterfall
One thing that really struck me was the caution from the book about how designers and developers should collaborate.
The characteristic of the traditional waterfall method is its orderly and distinct phases where UX designers, visual designers and developers work separately and independently: UX designers create wireframes first. Then visual designers create hi-fi mockups, and finally front-end developers turns the design into code. While this method appears organized on the surface, it fails to capture input from all the stakeholders early in the project. As a result, the quality of the final product often fall short of expectations.