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Design Systems Repo VS Design Systems for Developers

Compare Design Systems Repo VS Design Systems for Developers and see what are their differences

Design Systems Repo logo Design Systems Repo

A collection of design system examples and resources

Design Systems for Developers logo Design Systems for Developers

Learn how to develop a design system with Storybook.
  • Design Systems Repo Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-01-21
  • Design Systems for Developers Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-25

Design Systems Repo features and specs

  • Comprehensive Collection
    Design Systems Repo offers an extensive collection of design systems and related resources from various organizations and companies, making it a valuable repository for designers and developers seeking inspiration or references.
  • Categorization
    Resources are categorized effectively, allowing users to navigate through different topics such as style guides, pattern libraries, and design tokens with ease.
  • Community Contributions
    The platform is open to contributions from the community, which means it is frequently updated with new and diverse design systems from around the world.
  • Educational Value
    Design Systems Repo serves as an educational tool by offering insights into how established companies structure their design systems, which can be beneficial for teams creating their own.
  • Free Access
    The platform is free to use, providing a cost-effective resource for teams and individuals looking to explore design systems without a financial barrier.

Possible disadvantages of Design Systems Repo

  • Quality Variation
    Since the content is user-contributed, the quality and thoroughness of design systems can vary significantly, leading to a mix of highly detailed and somewhat superficial resources.
  • Lack of Customization
    While comprehensive, the platform does not offer tools for customization or direct integration into a user’s workflow, limiting its utility beyond merely serving as a reference.
  • Outdated Resources
    There is no guarantee that all design system resources are up-to-date, which could mislead users if they rely on outdated practices or discontinued guidelines.
  • Search Functionality
    The search functionality might not be as robust as desired, potentially making it challenging to locate specific design systems or topics without thorough browsing.
  • Limited Interaction
    The platform focuses on curation rather than interaction, providing limited opportunities for users to discuss, critique, or ask questions about the design systems showcased.

Design Systems for Developers features and specs

  • Consistency
    Design systems provide a unified set of design rules and components, ensuring that all developers produce consistent UI patterns across multiple projects or features.
  • Efficiency
    By offering reusable components and guidelines, design systems allow developers to quickly assemble parts of the UI, reducing the time spent on creating custom components from scratch.
  • Scalability
    With a design system in place, scaling a project or maintaining large applications becomes more straightforward as changes to the design can be propagated across the system.
  • Collaboration
    Design systems facilitate better collaboration between developers and designers by providing a common language and set of tools for creating and maintaining the UI.
  • Quality
    By adhering to the design system's guidelines and components, developers can ensure a higher quality of UI elements, improving user experience and reducing bugs.

Possible disadvantages of Design Systems for Developers

  • Initial Overhead
    Establishing a design system requires significant upfront effort and resources, which may be challenging for smaller teams or projects with tight deadlines.
  • Inflexibility
    Strict adherence to a design system can sometimes limit creativity or be unsuitable for unique UI requirements that fall outside the system's guidelines.
  • Maintenance
    Keeping a design system up to date with evolving technologies and design trends can be resource-intensive and requires ongoing attention and refinement.
  • Learning Curve
    Developers new to the design system may face a learning curve, needing to understand and adapt to its components, rules, and workflows.
  • Overstandardization
    Excessively rigid design systems might lead to a lack of differentiation between products, impacting brand identity or user engagement negatively.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Design Systems Repo and Design Systems for Developers)
Design Tools
80 80%
20% 20
Website Design
69 69%
31% 31
Prototyping
72 72%
28% 28
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Design Systems Repo should be more popular than Design Systems for Developers. It has been mentiond 6 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Design Systems Repo mentions (6)

  • How do you keep yourself updated with the latest design trends?
    There is still some value in understanding aesthetic trends, it’s good to make sure your components and interactions are consistent with patterns people may be already familiar with. I like to nerd out on Design Systems Repo to view open source design system documentation. You can see how companies style their components, as well as how they work “under the hood” so to speak. I then like to compare it to their... Source: over 2 years ago
  • Making a Design Systems collection, any more out there you know?
    This is the site I use to browse design systems: Https://designsystemsrepo.com/. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Design Systems online?
    Yup this. Also https://designsystemsrepo.com is worth a flick through as they have some interesting alternate takes. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Ask HN: Good resources for programmers to learn about UX/design?
    Design Systems Repo - A frequently updated collection of Design System examples, articles, tools and talks https://designsystemsrepo.com/ Awesome Design Systems https://github.com/alexpate/awesome-design-systems. - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
  • Design system template or example
    So just to add to this source, you can also look around on https://designsystemsrepo.com They have a large collection of actual used design systems from companies around the world. Often times, their design systems are open to anyone. I’m not sure about the component library, but you can always check and see if they have a link. Source: over 3 years ago
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Design Systems for Developers mentions (4)

  • How to avoid magic numbers?
    There's a whole idea of design system in frontend development, you can learn that more here: https://storybook.js.org/tutorials/design-systems-for-developers/ (I actually haven't read them, it's just one of the first result google gave me, but I know and use storybook.js and I can recommend their tool for creating a robust design system. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Career options - Junior dev/Senior designer
    You basically work in a team of developers and designers that maintain a catalog of components for a company. Your team would make sure all the components are accessible, consistent across all platforms, and are being used correctly within your applications. Here is a deep dive for developers on how these systems are used, built, and maintained. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Creating a design system using Vanilla Extract CSS
    ℹ️ This article goes deep into design system foundational topics like tokens, themes, variants. If you aren’t sure what some of these are, I’d check out a guide or tutorial that covers those. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
  • Storybook gives you unit tests, but for UI
    Storybook is a really good tool for building design systems. Ideally you'll want to distribute them library through npm. Here's a tutorial for it: https://storybook.js.org/tutorials/design-systems-for-developers/. Source: almost 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Design Systems Repo and Design Systems for Developers, you can also consider the following products

Eva Design System - A free customizable design system

Ant Design System for Figma - A large library of 2100+ handcrafted UI components

Fabrx.co - Create the UI Kits, Bootstrap 5 or HTML Dashboards that you need in minutes. Have some design sense to spare? Fabrx will help you tackle even the trickiest of projects.

InVision Design System Manager - Create and maintain your design system at scale.

Invision - Prototyping and collaboration for design teams

Angle 2 Mockups - A giant Sketch Library for creating app presentations