Knowing how a UI component evolves is key to creating a design system that lasts. This guide walks you through every step from idea to implementation. By following it, you’ll be able to build well-structured components that serve your users and keep your design system healthy and usable over time.
Research is a critical step in ensuring that your components meet users’ needs and are aligned with business goals.
Landscape Analysis: Look at existing solutions to understand best practices and spot gaps. Analyzing competitors helps you save time and resources and guides more informed decisions. This is especially important when working with a new tool or tech stack. Build from what others have learned.
Accessibility Analysis: Look for any potential accessibility issues that might make your component hard to use. Check the relevant WCAG criteria to make sure everyone can use your components.
User Testing: Conduct usability tests to understand user needs and behaviors, including participants with disabilities. This helps in designing components that are intuitive and user-friendly.
Gather Feedback: Gather feedback from stakeholders and end-users to guide component decisions and validate success.
Document Findings: Record and document the findings from your research to guide future design decisions and improvements.
At this point a decision needs to be made to whether you really need a new component or an existing component can be updated to meet the needs identified in the research phase. Summarize your research and clearly explain the decision in a short document.
Use principles from a progressive design modeling approach when developing components, where the fidelity or resolution of design deliverables increases as the task progresses (rough sketches → wireframes → prototypes → final product). Smaller reviews from other team members and stakeholders will help catch problems early and keep the design on track before moving forward.
Initial Sketches and Wireframes: Start with low-fidelity sketches and wireframes to conceptually outline the component.
Mid-Fidelity Prototypes: Progress to mid-fidelity prototypes to explore interaction and user flow.
High-Fidelity Deliverables: Finalize high-fidelity designs that align with your design system’s tokens, patterns, and utilities.
Prototyping: Where and How
As you can imagine, at this stage the lines between design and development get blurry. Engineers can start on functional prototypes as soon as wireframes are validated. This is essential for progressively testing and iterating on the development based on feedback.
Tools: Use tools like Figma or Storybook to create interactive prototypes.
Testing: Share prototypes with stakeholders and users for feedback.
Iterate: Use feedback to iterate on the design and functionality of the component.
At this stage the development team should have already been reviewing and maybe even prototyping the component. The final design specs should be ready for handoff to the development team to use as acceptance criteria. Ensure that component design is consistent and artifacts are in an accessible location for developers. Work in progress should be archived and siloed from final deliverables to avoid confusion.
Define the component API and ensure it is flexible and customizable.
Component Structure: Define the structure of the component, including its props, state, and lifecycle methods.
Clear and Consistent API: Make sure the API is easy to understand and is consistent.
Customization: Identify the strategy for level of customization and extensibility. Provide hooks or props to allow for customization. For example, CSS Custom Properties.
Organize Components: Organize components in a way that promotes reusability and discoverability within the component library.
Anatomy of a USWDS Component
A well-designed component should be consistent, reusable, and maintainable.
Structure: Components should be modular and easily integrated with other
parts of the design system.
Props: Define a clear API with
well-documented props and modifiers.
Documentation: Provide comprehensive documentation, including usage examples, props tables, and design guidelines.
Ensuring all necessary information is compiled and organized for distribution to all audience types: the product team, users, contributors, stakeholders, etc.
General Guidance: Provide clear guidelines for how to use the component, when to use, when not to use. As well as any notes on usability, accessibility, or performance, include examples and best practices.
Documentation: Create thorough documentation to support developers and designers with testing and releasing the component.
Testing Checklist: Document the testing procedures and checklist.
Release Checklist: Document the steps and criteria for releasing a component.
Edge cases: Document any edge cases or known issues with the component. These are more specific details than what’s in general guidance.
API Documentation: Provide clear API documentation for developers to understand how to use the component effectively.
Get everyone on the same page before releasing the new component. Understand how it’ll be introduced into the design system for a smooth and effective rollout.
Communicate the Addition: Ensure clear communication with all stakeholders, including designers, developers, and product managers, and planned communication to end users.
Coordination: Schedule a coordinated release where all teams are aligned and prepared for the new component. This approach is useful when the component requires significant changes across multiple products or resources.
Feature Flag Release vs Full: Determine if you want to launch the component to all users at once or use a feature flag to roll out the component gradually. (Feature flag releases allow you to gather feedback and make adjustments as needed before a full release.)
Feedback Loop: Ensure a mechanism for feedback to collect user and stakeholder feedback on the component as it’s being used.
Prepare for post-release support by creating a plan for ongoing support. Make sure you have ways to handle issues, updates, and feedback. Here are areas to consider:
Post-Release Support: Provide ongoing support for the new component. Issue management systems like Jira or GitHub Issues can be used to track defects and feature requests.
Monitoring: Monitor the component’s performance and usage to identify areas for improvement.
Bug Fixes: Triage, prioritize and address defects or issues that arise after the release.
Dependency Updates: Keep dependencies up to date to ensure the component remains secure and performant.
Feedback Loop: Triage and prioritize feedback gathered measure effectiveness.
General Considerations to Creating Your Own Component