Maximize Efficiency in UI Design with Component Libraries

Author: Rida Sebbti , UI/UX Designer

A designer’s toolkit is made up of many tools and resources to help them achieve their goal of delivering a user-friendly product. One of these undeniably valuable resources that every designer will use at some point in their career, is the component library. A component library is a collection of components that are pre-designed using a consistent design language. It’s important for supporting team cohesion and has become a necessity for many product teams.

Component libraries support product team cohesion by providing a visual aid through which designers can discuss various UI elements with developers. It is much easier to point to a pre-created component on Figma when discussing specs than it is to rely on speech or quick html markup on a call. This is even more evident with mockups when developers require precise details for multiple UI components they are building. The component library can provide a consistent reference and detailed specs whenever needed. This library can even be shared with other teams looking to reference the same component, which leads us to the next reason component libraries are important, consistency.

Maintaining consistency can be a challenge for many teams, but having a single source of truth will lessen, if not eliminate, the inconsistencies in our designs. This is because a component library provides a set of pre-designed building blocks that can be used when creating interfaces such as buttons, cards, and forms. These reusable elements prevent a reinvention of the wheel when new functionality is needed and streamline the design and development process by cutting out the time needed to build new, or edit existing, components.

In addition, the reusable components ensure that a common design pattern is maintained making the user’s overall experience with different parts of the app cohesive.

Ultimately your component library should support your team as they work together, including new members which brings me to my next point, onboarding new designers.

Effective designer onboarding can be significantly simplified with a well-organized approach. One of the most valuable tools in this process is a component library, which provides new designers with the essential resources needed to understand the application's design system. By familiarizing themselves with the foundational elements of the app, designers can quickly grasp the intended design patterns. A comprehensive library, complete with design specifications and various functional states, offers a clear vision of the app's intended look and feel.

Components such as buttons, tags, and cards, as well as more complex elements like tables and multi-page forms, are commonly utilized building blocks. As most designers are keen to dive into studying these components, having them readily available in a library can expedite the learning process. For instance, in my current project, which is part of a larger system encompassing ten apps, all applications reference the same component library. This consistency across the system allows for the frequent reuse of components, aiding designers in quickly acquiring contextual understanding.

In my latest onboarding experience, the use of a component library enabled me to reduce the time from initial introductions to commencing user testing with prototypes by several weeks. This efficiency was instrumental in achieving the anticipated release date for new functionality in our app. Upon joining the team, I was briefed on the tools and resources used by the design team, including the component library. After reviewing the library and a few mockups, I gained a better grasp of our app's context and started developing prototypes for new features. This process required no additional discussions with developers, as the component library provided all the necessary elements they were already familiar with. The familiarity with the UI facilitated straightforward sharing of designs with the development team. Subsequently, we conducted user testing with the prototypes, which allowed us to commence development in time to meet our impending deadline. The swift progress in prototyping and user testing gave my team ample time to conduct thorough testing and ensure a successful release. Looking back, starting without a component library would have significantly delayed my onboarding, posing a challenge to meeting our target release date.

I’ve found component libraries to be extremely valuable resources that make the design process more efficient. Both developers and designers alike will frequently refer to them as part of the iterative design process. However, as simple as component libraries are to reference, they can be challenging to start from scratch. Fortunately, there are many resources the design community has created to help overcome this hurdle, a major one being the United States Web Design System (USWDS). The USWDS provides a standardized design framework to help government agencies create user friendly websites with an emphasis on accessibility. This framework includes all the basic building blocks a team would need to get started along with design pattern guidance. And as the team continues to grow and improve their app they can build upon and change these basic components as needed to better suit their intended design pattern.