Hand off the API: a design & build workflow for components, with Jeff Pelletier — #10
Mar 24, 2025
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Jeff Pelletier, a frontend engineer with a design background, shares insights on strengthening the collaboration between designers and engineers in building effective design systems. He highlights the importance of establishing API-first component specifications to ensure alignment between design and code. Jeff discusses common challenges in workflows, the significance of thorough documentation, and how to navigate the complexities of handoffs. Additionally, they explore strategies to minimize distractions for developers, enhancing productivity and design quality.
Aligning the API with design and code is crucial for seamless handoffs, enhancing both workflow efficiency and product fidelity.
The involvement of engineers with design backgrounds bridges the gap between design intentions and functional products, enriching the design system process.
A structured feature workflow encompassing discovery, design, build, and documentation enhances collaboration, leading to thoughtful designs and improved team communication.
Deep dives
The Importance of Design and Code Alignment
Aligning the API with design and code is essential for a seamless handoff between designers and engineers. When property values differ between a designer’s mockup and the engineer's implementation, it creates friction that slows down the development process. The primary goal of design systems is to facilitate this handoff and improve efficiency. This alignment not only helps to speed up workflows but also ensures that the final product closely resembles the intended design.
The Role of Engineers in Design Systems
Engineers play a crucial role in the successful development and implementation of design systems, often overlooked in conversations. Their involvement ensures that the technical aspects of design are adequately addressed, bridging the gap between design intentions and functional products. Engineers with a design background bring unique insights that enhance the quality of the end product, demonstrating that a collaborative approach is necessary for effective design systems. This hybrid skill set is beneficial in creating user-friendly interfaces that meet both design and coding standards.
Navigating the Feature Workflow
A structured feature workflow is critical for managing contributions to design systems, moving beyond just component creation. This workflow includes phases like discovery, design, build, documentation, and publication of design elements, allowing for a comprehensive approach to feature development. It is important to recognize that these steps often overlap and are not strictly sequential, emphasizing the need for collaboration among designers and engineers. This iterative process leads to more thoughtful designs and improves communication between teams, ultimately enhancing the user experience.
The Role of Documentation in Quality Assurance
Documentation is a vital step in ensuring the quality and usability of components within a design system. Providing thorough documentation aids both designers and engineers, facilitating a smooth handoff and reducing misunderstandings about how components should function. By making details about properties, variants, and specific usage scenarios clear, teams can enhance their workflow and produce higher quality outputs. It's essential for teams to prioritize documentation alongside development to support ongoing collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Publishing and Communicating Changes Effectively
The publishing process for design systems involves synchronizing updates across design, code, and documentation to ensure consistency. This includes maintaining a clear status in documentation and communicating changes effectively within the organization. Creating dedicated channels for updates, such as Slack support channels, fosters open communication and keeps all team members informed about the latest developments. By streamlining the publishing process and enhancing communication, teams can minimize confusion and ensure all stakeholders are aligned with the most current design system resources.
Design systems aren’t just about components—they’re about how teams work together to build better UI. Jeff Pelletier, a frontend engineer with a design background, joins the show to talk about feature workflows for design systems, how design and engineering can work in parallel, and why documentation should be part of the process, not an afterthought. Jeff and Elyse dive into how to create API-first component specs, the challenge of design-code parity, and the ~drama~ of having a formal process.
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Into Design Systems is back with their annual virtual conference, May 28-30, 2025. Get your ticket now for three days of practical, hands on sessions showing the what, why, and how of design systems. This year, the conference is focused on developer handoff, accessibility, multi brand theming, and governance. You'll get hands on knowledge you can put to use at work immediately, files and resources to take away, and hear from very well known industry speakers.
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