Resilient Web Systems
A workshop with practical steps to take full advantage of the web
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Smashing Workshops
Want to reduce technical debt and scale your applications?
We partner with clients to build design systems that improve team communication, speed up development, and lay the foundation for a scalable codebase. An integrated design system can help your team maintain consistent designs across digital products over the long-term – finding bugs faster, and weaving system updates into the daily workflow.
When the inventor of the modern design system names you as the number one person she’d hire to build a design system, well then I jump! I’m grateful she put us in contact.
See work sample »OddBird is a company I recommend without reservation. They are among the best in the world at front end, design systems, and w3c standards.
We provide two integrated design system development packages. Purchase the Goals & Audit package on its own and build your system in house, or hire us to build your design system too.
Starting at $4K
Let’s assess your current designs & technology, understand your needs, and create a strategy together.
OddBird will meet (virtually) with your team. Together with your designers and developers, we will walk through your current workflow and projects, highlighting pain points and bottlenecks so that we can gain a shared understanding of your design system goals and needs.
OddBird will review any existing design system components, libraries, and/or platforms/tools your company uses, how you are using them, and any related project code.
Visual Inventory: A compilation of existing components within your project, documenting commonly used UI elements and their variations. We will identify and prioritize design patterns to be condensed, expanded, improved, and documented in a pattern library.
User Stories: A list of recommended next steps that could include: documentation, tooling recommendations, a component library, component development, component design, brand/graphic design, code organization, and team training sessions for hand-off.
Estimate: A set of “User Stories” or tasks estimated individually, and prioritized into phases as needed — giving you control of the timeline and budget to build your design system.
Custom estimates
Let’s set up the tools, workflows, and components you need, and train your team to use and maintain the system over the long-term.
Most design system projects begin with the Goals & Audit package to gain a shared understanding of the technology constraints, existing designs, and team goals. Based on the results of the Goals & Audit phase, OddBird will create a proposal and estimate that could include a wide ranges of services. In the “Build” phase, we will start with agreed-upon priorities and meet with you regularly while we work together.
The Build My Design System package concludes with training for your team to ensure successful hand-off. We are happy to (and often do) provide continued development and ongoing project updates, as needed, at our standard hourly rate.
Contact us if you’re interested in talking about auditing or building your design system, or if you want to chat about design system best practices.
Herman is a free tool made by OddBird which creates a living pattern library from the code in your CSS files. It saves time by standardizing designer/developer communication, on-boarding, and hand-off, helping to make your life a little easier.
Depending on your needs, Herman may be included in a design systems training and implementation project. We work with you to determine the best tools for your company.
A workshop with practical steps to take full advantage of the web
Jina and I answer questions about CSS, Sass, Design Systems, and more!
with meaningful code and automation
We start by talking about design systems and design tooling – how they differ, and the problems they solve.
Grid Systems & Vue Invaders!
I love when conferences give me the opportunity to travel around the world. I love it even more when conferences go beyond the web to find inspiration from other fields. Beyond Tellerand (Düsseldorf, Germany) was the best possible combination.
Agile design systems in Vue
I’ve been excited about Vue.js since Sarah Drasner first showed me the basics. Since then, we’ve started using it for client work at OddBird, and I’m constantly impressed by the power and simplicity – so it was a real honor being invited to speak at the first VueConf US in…
An agile approach to design systems on a budget
Design systems streamline development, communication, and consistency – but often rely on dedicated teams and extended budgets. We wanted a tool to create and maintain living style guides & pattern libraries in an agile process, and on a budget. Herman helps keep our development flow simple, and our UX consistent…
Living Style Guide documentation on the web is a difficult problem, gaining a lot of attention in the last few years. Let’s take an in-depth look at one way to store patterns directly in Sass, and generate documentation automatically.
It was an honor to be part of the first ever Clarity Conference in San Francisco – a beautiful event organized by Jina, and completely focused on Style Guides.