To achieve UI Design consistency, many companies choose the most common resources: Design Systems or UI kits.
These resources would help to save time and money.
In this article, let’s explain what are the differences between UI Kits and Design Systems and the pros and cons of UI Kits.
What is a UI Design Kit?
A UI Design kit is a repository that contains all the styles (fonts, colors, etc.) and components (buttons, inputs, icons, etc) used in a solution.
UI Kits — Pros and Cons
✅ Pros
Save time
Reuse of components used in other solutions
Efficiency
Designers have the opportunity to concentrate on specific problems
Consistency
Knowledge of the characteristics of each component
Save money
Speed up the design process
❌ Cons
Personalization
The need to adapt a UI kit to an existing design
Limit your creativity
Use of already created approaches VS innovative and revolutionary design
Difference between Design System and UI Design Kit 🤔
The UI Kit is less detailed and faster to produce. Focused on the User Interface, it allows a designer to create new pages quickly and allows the rest of the team to have visibility of the styles and components used in the solution.
A design system is much more advanced with visual rules and principles for Designers and Developers.
Conclusion
Both resources are great libraries. UI Design Kit, due to its speed in creation, it’s a great resource used by designers when building pages and prototypes.
Examples of UI Design Kit
Design systems
Material Design (Google’s design system)
Uniform (HUDL’s design system)
Thanks for reading!
Watch Masterclass #14 for a full guide!
