Design Tokens: the Path for Consistent & Reusable Visual Experiences

In this day and age, we are used to digital experiences that enhance our daily lives. From user-friendly apps to interactive websites, we've come to expect products that not only serve a purpose but also provide an enjoyable and familiar journey. However, it's no secret that not all digital encounters meet these expectations. Some leave us frustrated with their inconsistent or unfamiliar visual styles, while others lack any visual style at all, making them feel bland and; Quite frankly? Boring.

Ok, let’s pause for a moment, think about the last time you used an app or visited a website that made you wonder if you had accidentally stumbled into an entirely different platform. Buttons seemed to change colors, fonts appeared randomly altered, and spacing between elements seemed to have a mind of its own. Chances are, you were experiencing the consequences of a poorly managed design system.

Imagine your favorite recipe for a mouthwatering dish. Each ingredient plays a crucial role in enhancing the flavors and creating a delightful culinary journey. Similarly, a design system works in a comparable manner, seamlessly blending design and engineering to craft a harmonious user experience.

Yet, achieving this harmony isn't always easy, especially when designers and developers speak different languages. Designers care deeply about visual aesthetics, while developers are focused on the technical implementation.

This is where the term Design Token comes in. The secret ingredient to bridging the gap between design and engineering while creating consistent and enjoyable digital products. Design tokens serve as a common language that both designers and developers can understand and use to maintain a shared design system. They act as the building blocks of visual design decisions, such as colors, typography, spacing, and more.

So, how can design tokens transform a product from a chaotic mess into a user-friendly masterpiece? Let's take a closer look.

Deep Dive

Consistency and Familiarity

Design tokens bring consistency to the table, ensuring that apps or websites maintain unified visual styles across all its elements. From the vibrant colors that match a brand to the perfect typography that strikes the right tone, design tokens lay down the rules for the appearance of digital products. This consistency helps users feel at home, navigating effortlessly and trusting the platform.

Faster design iterations

Picture this: your team decides to update the primary color of your brand. With design tokens, you can make this change in a single place, and voila! The entire product seamlessly adopts the new color. No more hunting down every occurrence of the old color across the codebase or design files. Design tokens empower product teams to maintain the design system with ease.

Reducing Technical Debt

A chaotic product with inconsistent design elements is challenging to maintain and update. By utilizing design tokens, the product becomes more maintainable, as changes to design elements are centralized and easily controlled. This, in turn, reduces technical debt and streamlines future development efforts.

Simplifying collaboration

With Design Tokens, designers and developers no longer speak different languages and can finally be on the same page. Through collaborative efforts, they define and refine the design system, each bringing their expertise to the table. Designers can define the design tokens, while developers implement them in the codebase, resulting in a harmonious relationship between design and engineering teams. This newfound synergy leads to stronger, more enjoyable products.

Enabling Reusability:

Design tokens promote the creation of reusable design components. Once a design component is defined and styled using design tokens, it can be reused throughout the product and even across different projects. This reusability not only saves time and effort but also ensures design consistency across the entire ecosystem.

Enhancing User Trust:

A consistent and cohesive user interface builds trust with users. Design tokens help create a sense of reliability and professionalism, making users feel comfortable navigating the product. The result is improved user satisfaction and increased user loyalty.

Real example

Ok enough words, here’s a visual example:

In the above example, Designers create a set of defined color tokens.

The base color shown in the base hex value #00FF84. The Colors/Brand token alias which references the base color, The Button/Primary/Color token alias which references the brand color, and the Badge/Active/Border token alias which references the hex value with a 20% opacity.

From design POV

Any components from the design side can consume those variables by using Figma.

From engineering POV

Engineering teams can leverage tools like Tokens Studio with Styledictionary to automatically sync variables and styles created from Figma into their codebase while being able to track versions when the change happened.

/* CSS */
:root {
  --base: 151, 100%, 50%; /* HSL equivalent of #00FF84 */
  --colors-brand: hsl(var(--base));
  --colors-button-primary: var(--colors-brand);
  --badge-active-border: hsla(var(--base), .2);
}

Wrapping Up

Design tokens can bridge the gap between design and engineering by providing a single source of truth for visual style. This means that designers and engineers can work together more effectively, as they are both working with the same data. The ultimate goal is to enhance the time to live process of a product while ensuring that the visual style of a product is consistent across all platforms and devices.

Resources

Guide to variables Figma

Comprehensive guide to design systems

Design Systems Handbook

Figma intro to variables

Creating variables (Tokens Studio)

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Thanks for reading!