I made a design tool
Published on July 29, 2021
After roughly two years of on-and-off work, I'm releasing the progress I've made on a design tool. The tool gives form to the things I've learned as a product designer and my thoughts about design tools that already exist.
You can play around with the tool here.
The work done so far is just a demo. It allows you to create a single component, add states to that component, and change the visual properties of the component based on added variants. All of these systems interact with each other with the goal of creating a component whose full behavior and visual appearance are explicit.
As a demo, you can't save anything and, though tested, it probably has a few bugs. But I'd like to think there's enough there to convey some of my thoughts and ideas about where design tools could evolve and improve.
Although I'll be stepping away from the project for a while (I need break), there's plenty more I'd like to explore through in the future:
- State machines as an integral part of the tool in the design of components and flows.
- The role of data in design tools and how it can be best used to design interfaces.
- How a design tool can help present, document, and archive the design work.
- How a "view source" button for design files would work and what new functionality it would unlock
If you're reading this and decide to play around with the tool, let me know your thoughts!