Overview
The Terra team developed a process to guide contributors in dealing with different scenarios.
Why we need a process for this?
A functioning design system serves the “integrated platform” vision because it regulates the interaction pattern and feels of the look. When too many one-off instances exist in the platform, the platform gets unintegrated because different design patterns and component usage confuse the users.
However, use cases are always unpredictable. There is often a need to create a new component. We need to find the balance between a rigid system and changing demands. A robust process establishes that balance.
Step 0: Check Terra library first
Before all the steps, check if Terra design system has what you want.
Open Terra Library and search for what you want, whether it’s an icon or component.
Step 1: Defining what you want
Once you are sure that Terra doesn’t have what you want, identify what the new thing you want is. Different components need different actions.
Step 2: Finding your route
As different components have different complexity, there are different routes for different components.
Route: icons
Route one is for icons. The component has low impact and low complexity, so the process is the simplest.
Route: compounds
Route two is for compounds. The component has medium impact and complexity, so the process is relatively simple.
Route: components
Route three is for new or changes to existing components. The component has high impact and complexity, so the process is relatively complex.
It consists of 3 parts:
- Part 1: Avoid duplicates
- Part 2: Propose a new component
- Part 3: Make your component
Also, we are aware that the complexity can potentially block the squad work, so we included the solution in part 3 on how to unblock the squad work.
The first part of the process helps the designer vet the idea to avoid duplicates in the system.
This part guides designers adding the new component to the system.
We understand that you are busy. Below are different options to accommodate your workload.
Resources
Step 3: Development
Depending on requirements, the overall implementation consists of one or more of these discrete implementations:
- Web Development
- Android Development
- iOS Development
- Visual QA
- Accessibility QA (ADA QA)
- UI kit
- Usage documentation
- Icons and Illustration
When the overall implementation is complete, the TDS team will conduct a final review before release.
Step 4: Release
We release in the next available sprint. Typically the figma library components are released when the code of the components is also ready to be released so that the customers will have access to both design and the code at the same time. However, with any process, except chaos.