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USWDS: The United States Web Design System

designsystem.digital.gov

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Re: USWDS: The United States Web Design System

#131

Post by warpech »

gherkinnn wrote: post #130
warpech wrote: post #45

The term "design system" made a great career in a very short time. It wasn't really coined until 2016.

Nope, I've worked with and on design systems since 2010. And Brad Frost's Atomic Design [0], a formal system for developing a design system, was first written in 2013. 0 - https://bradfrost.com/blog/post/atomic-web-design/

I shall stand corrected. According to Twitter, the hashtag #designsystem started to appear in the context of UX in 2012 [1]

I you used that term in 2010, you are a real pioneer.

[1] https://twitter.com/search?q=(%23designsystem)%20until%3A201...

Re: USWDS: The United States Web Design System

#132

Post by p_l »

sakopov wrote: post #86
somehnacct3757 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would find real peace of mind in a design system maintained by a government that guarantees compliance with that government's accessibility requirements.

Any kind of technical compliance by government is guaranteed to be old and obsolete in the near future. The reality of the situation is that this "design system" is a waste of time and it will never iterate as fast as other systems maintained by industry experts in web compliance and accessibility. This is just a case where folks are happy that our government isn't doing shit in Dreamweaver anymore and has moved on t…

Considering that accessibility standards worldwide are mostly pushed forward by governments, even when there's action outside of it it's usually due to "government put laws stating specific requirements". While accessibility is usually afterthought unless directly whacked by a fine, and you can't just use "what's already available".

As for streamlining - this is streamlining, making it so that multiple entities within government that all need to build websites can use a common shared resource instead of duplicating the work (even "going shopping" for external solution takes valuable time).

Re: USWDS: The United States Web Design System

#134

Post by p_l »

XorNot wrote: post #89
alephnan wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I studied computer science and have been software engineer for almost a decade. Before college I came from a design background. I also went back to design school after I already became a senior engineer. One thing I've noticed is that art students have looked into pivoting into UI/UX design because it pays. There are skills and intuition that transfer, such as designing for visual hierarchy. In fact, there are even s…

I actually really hate material design in general. It's "okay" on Android, and that's the only place it works. The Material web design layout never feels good in the browser - it's floaty. Interactions don't ever feel "solid" - basically the experience is always like using a buggy webapp where you're thinking you need to open the dev panel to see if it's erroring silently. Try using any of Google's setting panels or…

I remember back before Material design, I think it was called "Polymer", and how it generally meant I needed to be extra careful because reimplementing basic browser behaviours in JS meant I was never sure if typing text in a textbox will work, not to mention dropdowns and such...

Re: USWDS: The United States Web Design System

#135

Post by jrochkind1 »

swyx wrote: post #116
jrochkind1 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem to rule out using a .gov.uk domain name for something hosted on netlify. I agree it looks cheesy and makes me wonder if it's really official government documetnation, without a .gov.uk hostname (and SSL cert, naturally).

former netlify employee here. all sites on netlify have a netlify subdomain, that doesnt go away when you add a custom domain. its just useful for deploy previews and stuff, content is basically the same. nothing untoward here

I think we're misunderstanding each other. I'd expect an official UK government site hosted on netlify to have a custom .gov.uk domain and to use that to refer to the site. Same as most large commercial enterprises probably do, right? Instead of using the netlify subdomain as the public host.

Am I misunderstanding something?

Re: USWDS: The United States Web Design System

#137

Post by [deleted] »

tablespoon wrote: post #41
EricE wrote: post #18

Anyone with any part in designing user interfaces seriously needs to commit their section on color to heart: https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overvie... Especially the contrast/magic number discussion. It's crazy how many user interfaces these days blur design elements to where you can't tell were controls are. The recent trend to eliminate window title bars is particularly infuriating, but button…

> Especially the contrast/magic number discussion. It's crazy how many user interfaces these days blur design elements to where you can't tell were controls are. The recent trend to eliminate window title bars is particularly infuriating, but buttons that don't look like buttons because they blend into the background are another pet peeve - or have light gray on dark gray. Ugh! Contrast serves a purpose! Modern UX de…

[deleted]

Re: USWDS: The United States Web Design System

#139

Post by vel0city »

pishpash wrote: post #67
wanda wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, you're not missing anything really, but I'm sure glad that not every website looks like a Bootstrap 3. I think these government ones are more about keeping a consistent style and look across departmental websites, than advertising a product for general use. In fact, I think the government would not take very kindly to hobbyists making official-looking websites serving a non-government agenda. Front-end isn't th…

> I think these government ones are more about keeping a consistent style and look across departmental websites, than advertising a product for general use. And how long will this last? Until the next administration who hates the association with the predecessor's style?

A lot of the people in the GSA are civil service employees. They don't have a lot of turn over administration to administration.

To an extent the spoils system has been a bit in the past for a while.

Re: USWDS: The United States Web Design System

#140

Post by kj4ips »

datavirtue wrote: post #93
tablespoon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially the contrast/magic number discussion. It's crazy how many user interfaces these days blur design elements to where you can't tell were controls are. The recent trend to eliminate window title bars is particularly infuriating, but buttons that don't look like buttons because they blend into the background are another pet peeve - or have light gray on dark gray. Ugh! Contrast serves a purpose! Modern UX de…

Exactly,I seriously can't wait until our modern UIs are made illegal by a modification to the disabilities act. I'll probably throw a party.

I vaguely remember a pizza delivery company facing a fine, because its website actively broke screen readers, and therefore was considered as discriminating against the blind.

Memory says a blind would-be customer complained loudly, but was ignored before they engaged the authorities with a formal complaint.

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