Refactoring UI: Making things look good
Resources to learn more about design systems and iteratively improving user interfaces
Slides from my workshop for Women Coders:
Template to start from the beginning:
Result:
Tools
⚙️ Cursor
Visual studio code, but with inline AI suggestions that you can approve chunk by chunk. Game changer!
⚙️ Raycast
Mac keyboard shortcut tool with useful extensions like a clipboard history, Tailwind classes, and more.
⚙️ Storybook
Tool for managing UI components in isolation, so you can test behaviour and check for visual/functional regressions quickly.
Resources
Ordered by quickest to longest to read
⚡ Design tokens: a visual explainer
📚 Refactoring UI by Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger, the creators of Tailwind CSS
Tactical tips on how to make your UI look better, from a developer's perspective
📚 Google's People + AI Guidebook
UX principles for building user-friendly AI products
📚 Design that Scales by Dan Mall
A primer on creating and managing design systems