James Nash Profile picture
Jul 26 9 tweets 2 min read
I find myself musing once again about elimnating design-to-dev handovers. Visual #UI #design tools certainly have their place, but I think they are used far more than they need to be.

I see so many cases where a wireframe (even a doodle on a whiteboard) would be...
...perfectly sufficient to explore ideas and convey the designer's intent.

And if "realistic" mock-ups or prototypes are really needed, tools that let you visually assemble actual code components (e.g. UXPin) are better suited. Their output is inherently more true-to-life as...
...you're working with the "real" components rather than visual approximations (or aspirations) of them.

For fine-tuning a UI's styling, there's no substitute for pairing with a dev and doing it live via their dev tools. Once you're both happy, the result is saved back to the...
...code and you're done.

Even when designing new or bespoke components or chunks of UI that aren't provided off-the-shelf by your design system, a combination of the above methods can suffice in many cases.

So when do we *actually* need a visual UI design tool? I suppose you...
...do when starting from scratch and establishing a brand new design system, or some kind of re-branding or theming (though I reckon design token tools might emerge that could be better for those latter use-cases).

But I'm struggling to see other cases where it's really needed.
Yes, teams and also stakeholders may need to adjust expectations. If they've gotten used to always working in or seeing "high-fidelity" designs, then seeing back-of-a-napkin woreframe sketches might be perceived as a step backwards.

But consider the velocity and savings...
...they'd gain.

Think of how much time, effort, money and brain power our industry has spent over the years trying to make "higher fidelity designs" and "better handovers"?

What if we'd instead put all that effort into tools that let non-technical people assemble and...
...experiment with real, coded UI components? Or things like AirBnB's 2017 (yes, 5 years ago!) concept that could translate hand-drawn witeframes into working UI code?

What if we had spent more time educating ourselves and our stakeholders to normalise these tools and...
...approaches instead of normalising "pixel perfect" designs (which are, frankly, a lie anyway - but that's another thread! 😜).

I think we'd all be in a more collaborative and productive place.

It's never too late to start though!

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More from @c1rrus

Oct 26, 2021
I see a few replies along the lines of "it doesn't behave the way the author expects". That may well be true, but I suspect the root cause goes deeper.

🧵👇

I think nowadays a lot of product teams expect websites and apps to look and behave the same everywhere. They often...
...want the finished product to be a "pixel perfect" match to design mock-ups. Anything less than the ideal target experience is considered wrong.

There's an expectation that all parts of the experience need to be controlled and predictable.

(aside: I think this visual-first..
...attitude to the web also contributes to semantics & accessibility often being afterthoughts. If all you're worried about is that it looks "right" on the screen, then why would you care about which HTML elements are being used?)

Many devs are therefore trying to get things...
Read 12 tweets

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