Chirp Design System [2/n] — Why I chose Twitter over other platforms
This article will discuss why I chose to build the Design System for Twitter over other platforms. This is a conscious decision, and I did not decide on it out of the blue.
Here I am again. If you have read my last article, you’ll probably know the reason for the story behind this project. This article will shed some light on the criteria I considered while making this decision.
Brainstorming on Next Steps
Okay, I have decided to build a design system. But for what should I exactly do it? Should I create a system from scratch that does not have any designs yet? Should I offer some freelance or contract work to display my expertise? Or should I create a system for an already existing product? Let’s go through them one by one.
Should I create a system from scratch?
I mean, this is great. There are plenty of design systems out there like Ant Design System, Cabana Design system, and Pegasus design system. These are the design systems that organisations can rapidly iterate on to create or adapt the entire system to their brand identity. But in reality, I’d be working for an organisation as a design systems designer.
If I take this path, I will only concentrate on creating style guides, components and patterns with the respective documentation. It does not include testing ideation on the architecture of the system. This will not count as an industrial exposure as a design system designer.
Should I take a contract work to get the exposure?
It is tough to get the contract work in this niche despite taking this path. And even though I luckily found one, I'm pretty sure that they’ll have second thoughts about my experience. And let’s consider a scenario where I get one; fortunately, ideally, it will not be that effective in the long run. A design system is not something you can make in months. You’ll have to nurture it and make constant changes based on feedback; several contributions should occur. It’ll be an incomplete work with many ambiguities when leaving or doing a KT to the team. So, I said no to this path.
Should I create a system for the existing product?
I only saw pros taking this path. Let me explain. When I get into an organisation, I’ll be working on a system that designs are already there for. This path makes me wanna do systems thinking, creating the architecture that suits the product that scales with the organisation. I’ll get to choose the hierarchy that will be followed in the entire system, whether it may be how I organise the files or projects in Figma or internal or external documentation.
So I thought this would be the perfect path for me to take because this option gives me all the real-world experience.
Choosing the product
Okay, now I have a decision to make. Which product should I choose to build the system for? Well, there are a lot of products out there to choose from. My objective for this project is to show that I can manage to build a multi-brand or multi-themed design system. There are a plethora of apps like Swiggy, Zomato, and Cred (in our country) that only have one theme and are pretty simple to build. They are easy to manage as well.
But I wanted to work on a product that covers everything - right from the architecture of the system. I wanted to build a multi-brand design system with multiple products with complexicity but I don’t have the necessary resources. So, I settled with a multi-themed design system. I also thought comparatively the complexicty involved in Multi-theme Design System is a bit lesser than the Mult-branded Design System.
Again, there are plenty of products with multi themes to choose from. Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail etc… So which one should I pick? Well, I filtered them based on the parameters like
Complexicity Involved
Maintenance
Component Quantity
Systems Thinking
Scope of the System
Expanding Potential in terms of Features
Multi Device Support
I wanted to have a mix of all the parameters and the constraint that I have is to do this project in a minimum time with great output. So Twitter seamed to be the perfect fit.
Why Twitter is the right decision for me?
Well, I am not certain about it as well until I started ideating on the architecture for the system (which is my next article). But after building the infrastructure, it involved lot of systems thinking, organsing the Figma Team in such a way it’ll be easy to maintain as well as usable for designers.
Conclusion
In the next article [3/n], I’ll be writing about “Performing the audit of the interfaces”.
