Chirp Design System [1/n] — The Story Behind the Project
In this article, you’ll be reading about my professional journey and what made me start this project.
Backstory
So yeah, it was my final semester of Mechanical Engineering, and placements had started. Fortunately and unfortunately, I got an offer from a Mechanical company. I am not sure I was happy because, deep down, I knew that it wasn’t for me.
Since childhood, I have always been interested in Technology, computers, gadgets, and logic. Generally, people who love computers think they like coding. So I have asked a couple of my Computer Science friends, “Yoh, where to start this coding?” The majority of folks said it’d be great to start with Front-end because it is simple, and you’ll get to know if coding is for you. So I started learning HTML and CSS.
And, of course, on social media, we tend to follow what we are learning on every social media platform. I am a huge Reddit fan, so I followed all the subreddits related to the front-end. Then one fine day, as I was browsing the feed, I got a suggestion post in my feed; a guy posted, “I designed this in Figma in one day. Please provide feedback”. I was stunned. Not because the design is super, but because I got into confusion. I am here sitting for weeks coding a website, and how come this guy created it in a day.
Well, I probably Google searched what’s Figma and all. And that is when I got to hear about the term UX, and there is a career that can be made out of it. I instantly knew that it was a perfect intersection for me. I said to myself, “This is it. This is what I wanted to do. I’ll be one of the best UX Designers”. I started searching for courses to learn all about UX without any delay. Lucky me, Google was offering one. I immediately registered for the course and started the grind.
The Learning Phase
So here is how the course helped me to build my portfolio. The entire course is divided into seven modules. After completing five modules, you’ll have one case study in your portfolio. And after completing seven modules, you’ll have 3 case studies in your portfolio. But all the problem statements that it is giving to solve are very generic, like “design a weather app, ticket booking app etc.” I wanted to try with a real problem and started applying for internships to get that industry exposure.
I started applying for the same, and they used to send me design tasks. I took these tasks as real problems. And that is how my Dribbble portfolio was filled in the initial days. After applying for a bunch of internships, I got into a fintech and a legal tech startup company called “Solvendo”.
I have to say — this particular internship laid the foundations for what I am today. I thank and forever stay in gratitude for the manager for trusting me to handle such a complex product. Okay, back to the story, The project is vast; there is a multitude of places where I used to copy elements and paste them to other screens. Then my manager, at the end of the day, comes and makes some changes to one screen and asks me to update them on all the remaining screens.
Oh boy, it used to take another 60–90 minutes to change every single element on all screens. I thought, “there has to be a better way”. So I searched for the same in the Figma Forum and learned about Components for the first time. So I started using them in my designs, and I was really excited to get them into my workflow.
Well, I probably did not know back then that organising the components matters. On seeing this component page in Figma, my manager appreciated me for building this UI Kit. Me to myself: UI Kit? What’s that? I said thank you to her and obviously searched for UI Kits.
On searching for UI Kits, I came across “DESIGN SYSTEMS”. That was the very first time I ever saw that word. I immediately searched for them, and my first DS [I’ll refer to Design System as DS from here] I ever laid my eyes was on Atlassian Design. I instantly fell in love with it. I loved how everything was organised, documented, and well explained in how to use the components in a well-defined pattern.
It did not stop there… I was so obsessed with DSs that I joined every other community related to them. I followed several people on Twitter, went through all the popular design systems, and currently, my favourite DS so far is Orbit by Kiwi.
I eventually mastered Figma and learnt basically every quirk and hack available out there. People also call me Mr Auto Layout. I reached the point where people started suggesting that I create a course on Figma. So I started one. Look at it here if you want to know more about it [currently, it is discontinued]. I had also started a YouTube channel with only Trailer video, which was discontinued because I learned that teaching through videos is not for me.
During my internship, I also forgot to say that I simultaneously completed the Google UX Design Specialisation and got certified.
Professional Journey and finding my niche in Design Systems
After completing my internship in August, I joined one of the largest Global Design Studios in the world — Lollypop. I was given the role of UI Designer in the company. [Also, the current Lollypop Website you see was one of the works I collaboratively did at Lollypop]. Due to the presentation I gave on Figma in the firm, I became a Go-To Figma person for the organisation. Anyone who wanted help with Figma used to reach out to me and ask.
Fast-forwarding to 3 months at Lollypop, I got into BYJU’S Project, where developers specifically asked for a component library. I volunteered myself to my Lead that I’ll take up this. I felt super enthusiastic while crafting that component library. It felt challenging and exciting, and I just liked the entire process of making components responsive, using referencing with tokens and auto layouting everything. So at that moment, I decided that I wanted to be a Design Systems Designer and a UX/UI Designer.
Searching for a dedicated Design Systems Team
Unfortunately, since design systems are just getting into the light, finding roles for a junior designer like me seems a bit difficult. Every job description asks for at least four years of experience as a Product Designer and One year at least contributing solely to a Design System.
So I wanted to prove that even though I do not have written experience in my resume, I am capable of building a Design System from scratch.
That is how the Chirp Design System got into existence.
Conclusion
In the following article [2/n], I’ll write the reason behind why I chose Twitter for building the design system over other products. Until then, well, All the best in whatever you are doing. Just keep grinding, and you’ll get there.
