Parametric design. Next half step after Design in browser

Browser Design - Parametric Design - Auto Design

I will begin with the phrase of Grigory Bakunov, which most of them let go of my attention, but I could not rush past her.

“There will be crowding out to the market a large number of specialists, who this time, instead of drawing the design, will tune the means for building an automatic design”

This was mentioned in the context of automatic design , which immediately caught my attention. In detail, I still have little idea of ​​the technical implementation of automatic design, except that a few vague thoughts, not supported by technology. But it is clear that this will be a complex, interesting and flexible ecosystem.
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Roll back a bit. Just a year and a half ago, the stumbling block was the rendered layouts. So, as the main problem, there was a difference in the display / behavior of the possibilities of the graphic editor and the live code. Then many “true” designers, mostly design ones, switched to the “Design in browser” side and the logic bar began to grow at a fairly fast pace. All synchronized in terms. It became clearer to communicate with interface specialists of different levels and different roles (in the interface process). Design in the browser itself is not a point of return, but this is just the starting point of a long journey.

UI parameters

After your browser-based toggle switch worked, your brain seemed to be removed from the parking brake and having experienced a sharp jump in the level of development of interfaces, you crave something more, more logical, powerful and technological. And you start to “gut” your interface, look for mutable and immutable parts, look at how they interact with each other, look for dependencies between them. And after the start of the dive comes the realization that the whole UI is the parameters.

Accompanied by a terrible depression and whipping up euphoria, your usual workflow collapses. The implementation of future projects becomes vague. But one thing you consistently understand that now not one entity created by you UI will not be drawn / designed just like that. Since it must clearly fit into the ecosystem. Of course, “there is not much order”, but in order to comply with it, you first need to understand or work it out. And you start designing your guides to determine that order. And then you design and project UI Kit. Without which no more or less serious project is being done now.

Fight time

And your arsenal is charged and you send it to the "combat project." But after a few shots, you have a slight jitter, regarding the fact that your heavy artillery is not so flexible and mobile. These thoughts simply occupy the mind. There is an understanding that everything is going as it should, logically and progressively, but the unpleasant feeling that you have been fixing somewhere is nervously itching, smoothing you crazy.

Parameters again

After diving inside yourself, inside the interface and analyzing the problem, you begin to hear sober voices indicating that the main task is to make the ecosystem flexible to change. And all this is solved by some kind of interface dependencies, the imposition of variable parts into variables, even more stringent guides, and structural rules for the formation of the interface. Now you feel like an "interface god." And you realize that the “correct” UI cannot be born outside the browser, since a lot of chains of dependent parameters appear. In fact, you have developed your own UI framework that is “perfectly” customized for your tasks and projects.

UI framework

If you discard the husk, then your UI process is the processing and classification of data according to certain parameters, guided by logic and regularity. Your resulting interface has absolutely no value (now I mean directly the “matter” itself, not relying on research, experience, and so on. Until the UX has frothy mouth) and it doesn’t matter how much time you spend playing it . What is more important is how elaborated your core is and how quickly and flexibly you can reproduce exactly the same and another hundred similar ones, in terms of the manufactory itself. Then the process moves nicely from endless refactoring to successive improvements.

Natural improvement

At a certain point, the project interface reaches the moment when it ceases to fever. A kind of stable version . And then a point improvement is required. It is important not to dig in local edits. If you have a need, make a lot of stylistic local changes to a component, this is a signal that can mean two things:

1. Either you are engaged in "custom", as a result of taste, and you are not very well aware of your UI.
2. Your basic kit is not flexible enough to allow reasonable modifications to the component.

Conscious UI is when you learn to find more and more parameters with each iteration and start organizing them. And then you build algorithms to improve them.

Design must be killed

If you had no reason to hate yourself, now is the time. You smashed the head off throughout the random, sentimental, beautiful part of the design. And worst of all, you get pleasure from it. Congratulations, you are now in a sect.

Role and data type

In the browser there is no such thing as some kind of interface object. If it is just an object, then it has absolutely no meaning in the interface. Since you just can not identify it in your ecosystem. Ultimately, you will come to component thinking at the earliest stages, and not at the final stages of the process. You will come to BEM, only at the design stage.

In fact, you don’t care about the appearance at all, not that it doesn’t really matter at all, just the appearance, this is a consequence of the algorithm through which the object passes. And here even the most sophisticated artist becomes an ascetic. You realize that you used to be simply stunned by the cosmetic capabilities of the web and produced a lot of trash.

Austerity in design

• Radical minimalism, as the highest degree of consistency. Since all parameters are controlled.
• Design in accordance with the methodology for reuse and scaling.
• Logically fragmented content, ready visualization.

We kill emotions in design

Explicit "vulgar" emotions must be completely eradicated in the design. This is the only way to make an interface efficient. Everything must obey logic and system, and the user and the interface response must be mutually trainable.

In good UI, aesthetics are orderly. There is a lot of controversy that engineers kill creative, and creatives create chaos. But in fact, upon reaching the highest level of understanding, all come to one point - an orderly creative .

Algorithms

When your interface is combed, there is still half a step left for you to stop thinking with matter (mock ups / screens) and rise to an even higher abstraction. Start thinking with algorithms that your design entities will go through. Algorithmic design is the next step, which resets all restrictions, making your interfaces more flexible, more accurate. In fact, your interface kernel is an API that you run through some processes, get new, hybrid combinations and produce a delightful result.

Natural need of mass

After going through all the circles of “automated hell”, you realize that your approach is as good as you could expect from it. And other members of the sect, he is also good. But you have no points of contact and it is so depressing that you are ready to take someone else's approach and adapt it to yourself, just to be part of something more than just your projects. (More on this in “BEM obsession. The consequence of parametric design” )

2016

It is difficult to come to terms with parametric design , especially if you are still from the category of Old Believers and your “religious” design barriers hold you down. I will not deny myself the pleasure, once again, to tempt and recommend reading the New Year's Eve @cssanderhood (led by Andrey Sitnik ) 12/24/2015 about the upcoming trends, such as media queries, depending on the containers (and not on the screen size), the wrappers that set the behavior of the internal blocks and so on Ask yourself how ready your environment is for developing such interface solutions.

Death is terribly interesting

I will finish the post with Grigory Bakunov too: “All developments connected with the death of some profession are terribly interesting.” But in fact, design is immortal - because it is too broad a concept. But all attempts to kill him, push him to an incredibly new level ...