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Patterns: The stories of our design systems
Design Patterns are some of the most over-used concepts in design today. And we all know what happens when you have some ideas all over the place. We start repeating them like parrots and applying them to everything, therefore distorting their meaning. We end up missing the point with over-complicated concepts and lots of fancy words. So here is my humble attempt to bring more clarity to what design patterns are while applying something I live for: Always keep it simple!
Keep it Simple
In my article ‘Understanding the parts of a Design System’ I touch-pointed on patterns with a more ‘neutral’ definition:
Patterns consist of a reusable collection of components that can be defined by their respective interactions when solving a design problem. These need to be adopted and documented as business cases and together build a consistent and robust ecosystem.
As mentioned in that same article, and based on this definition we can define 3 key metrics that help us identify and validate what a pattern is:
- A pattern is a solution to a common design problem, always linked to a business case.
- A pattern is reusable by nature and always linked to components and other pieces of a design system.
- A pattern must be documented…
