Ridd 🤿 Profile picture
Sep 7, 2021 10 tweets 4 min read Read on X
"Slot" components are one of the best ways to save time as a product designer

They can be tricky at first, but once you wrap your head around the right way to use them...

They become one of the most powerful tactics in @figmadesign👇
What are "Slots"?

They're placeholder components that are part of larger organisms or templates.

They are intentionally empty so that they can be replaced with a local component.
Why use "Slots"?

1. They minimize sources of truth

2. They allow you to integrate local UI into your design system components

3. They eliminate a ton of manual work
Example 👇

In my UI Kit, I'll create a "Modal" component that contains a single "Slot".

This way I can define all of the variants for my modals once, and insert any UI seamlessly into the existing system
Then when I import my modal into a new file...

I create a new "Modal Content" component that includes any UI I want to insert into my modal.

It's the perfect way to integrate local designs with a component imported from one of your libraries.
And the best part? If you use auto layout to create your modal content and set it to "fill container"...

All of your local UI will work perfectly with your pre-defined modal variants!
It's important to note... I used to do this the wrong way...

Don't create multiple slot components and swap them for individual components (like buttons or inputs). Re-ordering is a HUGE pain and I now only use a single "Slot".

It's infinitely more flexible 💪
Currently working on a lesson for @figmaacademy that shows how Slot components can be used to power entire templates for a web app 🤯
If you made it this far, click into the first tweet and share with someone else who you think might enjoy using "Slots"!
Lastly, this is a great way to get Figma closer to code.

Because engineers will have consistent logic for how modals display, what they look like on mobile, what the default padding is, etc.

"Slots" allow you to define those rules once, and then easily insert any UI ✌️

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More from @ridd_design

Jun 25
So I've been vibe coding a side project 😅

And I figured out a flow that's been working really well for me so I wanted to share

Here's my new playbook 👇
My current project is a proximity-based scheduling tool for my dad's insurance adjusting business

And the first thing I do is treat ChatGPT as my CTO and dump as much context as I can possibly think of for what I'm trying to build

But here's the important part...
Before hopping into Cursor I prompt ChatGPT to ask me questions to clarify its own understanding

It’ll generate a list of questions and then I’ll ramble about the answers using voice mode

We’ll run that loop 5 or 10 times until ChatGPT says it has a perfect understanding Image
Read 7 tweets
Sep 16, 2024
Why is it cool to hate on design systems? 🤔

I'm starting to think the pendulum has swung too far and we're missing the point...

Some thoughts 👇
I’ll admit… I never use the phrase “design system” anymore.

Somehow the term has become synonymous with scale

And one reason is b/c we're constantly referencing the biggest systems (Polaris, Spectrum, Material, etc.)

But our tools are also to blame 👇 Image
Many of Figma’s new features cater to enterprise customers (and it makes sense why 🤷‍♂️)

But what about YOUR product?

Do you reeeeally need to define typography primitives as variables?

So let's take a step back... b/c design systems don't have to be so "enterprise-y" 👇 Image
Read 12 tweets
Sep 6, 2024
The @outerbase website is an interesting case study in design trends right now

some (slightly nerdy) thoughts 👇
Idk when it happened exactly but dev tools have had a huge impact on web design trends over the last few years

But we reached a point where they all used glows, gradients, transparency, blurring, etc.

So it's interesting to see brands like Outerbase take a hard left 👇
Image
Image
They lean all the way in on this generative image style 👀

Some use cases I've seen before like using custom images to frame mockups

But they're also doing some things I've never seen before...
Image
Image
Read 10 tweets
Apr 18, 2024
I've been thinking too much about what it looks like to design with "soul" 💭

It's a tough concept to pin point.

But I think I've narrowed it down to 4 signals 👇
1 // Unreasonable quality

Designing with soul means at least one thing you ship will be unreasonably good... like WAY more than you're required to do.

The example that comes to mind is the Figjam unfurling interaction 👇

Talk about going beyond the brief...
There is no chance this was a requirement in a PRD.

Quality like this only comes from an "intrinsic place of motivation"

I can feel the care put into this interaction every time I drag a new sticky onto the canvas. That's what makes it memorable.
Read 9 tweets
Feb 26, 2024
It's taken me over 4 years...

But I think I finally have the perfect method for nailing ☀️/🌙 modes in @figma

Here's my step-by-step process 👇 Image
To create a themeable system like this I like to start with Tailwind's 50 → 950 scale

Then we update it in three phases:

1) Nail the hue (easy)
2) Pick your saturation level (easy)
3) Use UI to derive brightness values (this is where the magic happens)

Let's dive in 👇
1// Nail the hue

The best way to ensure your grays work well with your brand palette is to use the hue from your primary color

This is part of why it's so important to use HSB or HSL instead of hex codes (I'll use HSB in this walkthrough)

That sets us up for step 2 👇 Image
Read 17 tweets
Jan 25, 2024
What are we doing in Figma today that we’ll regret 6 months from now? 🤔

There's been some BIG regrets over the years...

And I think it's starting to happen again 👇 Image
Let's begin by looking at two of the biggest Figma regrets over the past few years

Then we can identify trends 🔍

Sound good? ✌️

The story starts in 2020 shortly after the release of variants...
Variants made it 10x easier to make components and swap between them.

So we made all the variants—literally every single possible combination 🤯

The larger the variant sets, the more painful they were to update, which led us to regret #1 👇 Image
Read 15 tweets

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