Speed Up Your App Design Using Pre-built Variables From a Design System

Step into the creative universe of app designs! As UI/UX designers, we are constantly looking for new and interesting ways to enhance our app design skills. Thankfully we are at a point in which technology offers us many shortcuts. And with the advancement of technology automation slowly but surely made its debut in the UI/UX design world.

Think about how centuries ago we needed to hunt and grow fields to eat, nowadays we are going to the store and getting everything we need, we even have food delivery apps. And a design system is a store for designers. In a design system, we have every element ready, waiting to be picked by you and integrated into a UI/UX design – including variables.

A design system creates productivity and efficiency by developing elements that can be personalized and used by a UI UX designer or by everyone from a team. It creates accessible libraries that can store assets and be later used or integrated into a design. Design systems give you the ability to create a website or an app from scratch, only needing your personal touch when it comes to customizing your already existing elements. 

Big companies were the first to take advantage of design systems by implementing them in their work procedures. Think about Uber, Airbnb, and many other giants that need more than a web design. They have apps and websites for several countries, and designing each and every one of them and making them similar was harder before implementing design systems. 

But, design systems can't be used only to design similar projects. Design systems give you the ability to customize and create reusable elements and one that can help you step up your game is variables. Variables have the purpose of storing value which can be later reused and interacted with.

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If you are looking for a lifeline, variables can do that for you. They are the dream of every UI UX designer when it comes to making changes and finding fast alternatives. Variables have the ability to store data with the help of tokenization. Variables make tasks simpler, they can provide solutions that can happen faster, helping us save time when creating a design, managing one, or building complex prototypes.

However, if you are looking to make your work as efficient as you can you might also be interested in tokens. As Steve Jobs once said, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is”,  and tokens can help you achieve that. 

Design tokens help you create collections that later on can act upon different elements included in your design. So, you can organize your work better and have it classified using common variables, such as color, number, string, and boolean. These are further divided into more complex fields and groups. Think about classifying color variables. For example, they can be further divided into primary color variable groups or secondary color variable groups. And, tokens are the ones that help you organize your work. 

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Benefits Of Using Variables

1. Variables speed up the process

If you’ve ever thought to yourself “How can I increase my application speed?”, variables definitely Variables help you speed up your game while providing accessible designs. Having continuity is mandatory. It creates flow and predictability, improving the user experience and the usability of your design. And variables can help you do that. Variables act upon certain elements in your design and help you make changes simultaneously on more than one element. So, you won’t be spending countless hours doing the changes manually as with just a few clicks variables have you covered. 

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2. Pre-built variables offer discipline and continuity. 

For a design to be deductible we need continuity and variables can offer that. With variables, we can organize specific settings that will focus on keeping strict guidelines. And, you won’t have to worry about missing a color, or using a different size for a button, as they act on your elements and make sure that they are all in sync. 

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3. Variables also sustain the creation of an efficient color palette. 

Think about making the switch between light and dark mode and how fast variables can make the switch depending on the situation.

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4. Variables help accessibility and deductibility.

Even more so, this tool can create similarity in a design, which makes your design accessible and increases the user experience. Accessibility and deductibility need to be on top of every UI UX designer’s head when starting a project and variables can make sure you follow that practice. 

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As former Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer said “Accessible design is good design if it benefits people who don’t have disabilities as well as people who do. Accessibility is all about removing barriers and providing the benefits of technology for everyone.”. 

So, when creating a design we need to make sure that anyone can benefit from it. However, coming up with all possible variables and scenarios that can interfere with your design can be challenging. So using variables from a design system can be even more helpful. 

Variables can hold individual values, but they can be expressed one at a time. The properties a variable holds can’t be stacked one on top of each other as we see on styles.

Think of variables as the pages from a book, you can see one at a time, but when it comes to styles you see the book that holds all the pages — they are stuck.

For a better understanding, you can also think of variables as shampoo, and can only do one task at a time. But, on the other hand, we have 3 in one shampoo, which can do several tasks at once, as styles do. So when choosing the right tool for you, keep in mind that variables offer you the possibility of reusable colors that have the capability of responding to different modes. And you should think of styles when you want reusable gradients, or when you want to combine modes or blend multiple files.

‍Pre-built variables can help you deliver better designs. And in a world where time means money we need to act fast and use any shortcut available.