Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Andrés Richero

Let´s review the design process of a platform that allows the creation of infinite experiences.

When we talk about User Experience Design (UX), Interaction Design (XD) or User Interface Design (UI), we tend to focus on a final product that solves a particularly concrete problem. It´s few times that we talk about products that allow other products to be built on top of them. These kind of products are those that we generally call Platforms. For the purpose of understanding them better let´s define them.

What is a Digital Platform all about?

In order to make it simpler we can define a Digital Platform as follows:

A digital platform is a system that serves as the starting point for other compatible modules to work.

Several applications may be built by combining compatible modules .

* You might also want to check a more general definition at the Wikipedia.

If we follow this definition we may be able to quickly identify multiple digital platforms, of different kinds and with different scales.

These are just some examples of digital platforms organized in different verticals.

What they all have in common is the fact that, on top of a base system, multiple interconnected applications have been built and each of them solves a known number of problems. The kind of experience they want to provide is also shared. In the process of implementing and customizing these systems and modules, a wide and diverse set of solutions is generally achieved.

10700 Green Base Plate

10700 Green Base Plate

That´s how we can identify this part at the LEGO store, but even without knowing its part number, we know this particularly interesting piece, right?

This Green Base Plate serves as the supporting system for an infinite number of ideas.

LEGO is a system created and globally recognized for its bricks that match perfectly well, are based on modules and open up the possibility to create almost infinite forms and represent countless ideas.

Design Principles

This system was created based on a registered set pin and socket.

Creating things with this system is extraordinarily simple. Making two different pieces fit is very easy and the Green Base Plate is not at all necessary in the process of creating wonderful things. Still, it keeps to be more interesting than the rest of the pieces. It may be the best representation of space in the LEGO world.

It clearly represents a coordinate system that enables the positioning of an element in the space with precise coordinates.

Tracing an axis on top of this piece is simple.
Thinking of a direction in which this plane extends is easy too.

The same thing happens when there are two axis that extend to the infinite.

While we use the elements on the system we are in control. We can understand, just by taking a look at the Green Base Plate, which is the length and width of the surface in which we will be working.

We can also define regions where to place different elements.

And trace limits. Contain. Fence. Control.

We can open those limits. Define a rhythm. Establish relationships between spaces.

We can create uniform sequences with evenly aligned elements.

Or instead define uneven, heterogeneous sequences.

And count on a immensely wide set of different pieces with which to create wild new universes.

Component library

For those of us who work designing applications, web solutions or digital platforms of any kind, the concept of a component library is no news. We are used to relying on them.

In the case of LEGO, the component library is huge! And the number of combinations even more.

Here´s an interesting, trivia like, fact. Did you know that six yellow eight pin bricks can be combined or put together in 915 million ways?

So now let´s see a tiny, almost insignificant, part of the LEGO component library.

Now imagine what you can do with all those different pieces 😁

Pattern library, Style guides, Design Systems. Do you need one?

Styleguide

This is also a tool that designers are acquainted to.

As we know, LEGO bricks are not just green, or red, or yellow. But also, they are not any kind of green, red or yellow. The color palette is an important part of the LEGO styleguide.

Take a look at the 2016 Color Palette

Designing a styleguide: elements that go into building compelling products

Design system

Above all these two, Component or Pattern Library and Styleguide, there´s a bigger concept ruling, the Design System. Amongst other things, a Design System grants consistency across products and allows the product or platform to scale.

These tools and processes that are frequently used in the design and development of digital products, define in good way the scope of the product, the way that it looks and works and they set a shared starting point so that the design process can be flexible, collaborative and consistent.

Defining Design Systems

Counting on these tools and processes we can crate a wide range of things. Yet, none of the images below could be achieved without the presence of another element, just as important.

A story to tell

Each box of LEGO tells a story, or at least a part of a story, and each of them is also a starting point for a whole new story.

LEGO has become an expert in telling stories, either built internally like Ninjago or licensed like Star Wars.

Ninjago is being told from scratch by LEGO. It´s a powerful story that captured the attention of millions of kids and adults all over the world.

On the other end we have Star Wars. Who can deny the power of this story? We all want to be part of it one way or another, don´t we?

For each of these stories there´s also multiple characters. We get to know the different angles of each of them, we love some of them, we despise others. But independently of our emotional approach to certain characters or the stories´ plots themselves, stories, as a whole, are the ones that take the system, the design system, the styleguide, the component library one step forward.

Stories are the engine behind any product or platform.

And when we´re talking about a platform, as the one that LEGO offers us, those stories may always become new stories.

A platform does not limit itself to entering an existing market — it changes the rules of the marketplace and creates a new market for itself. This is essentially what the LEGO System of Play was designed to do! It was meant to give children (and even adults) the means to create their own play, instead of handing out ready-made solutions. With complete interoperability between any bricks past and present, the LEGO System of Play is the platform on which a whole ecosystem is based. Children of my generation used LEGO not only with LEGO, but also to build vehicles, buildings, and furniture for action figures and dolls. It is this platform aspect that gives LEGO much of its longevity via spanning over generations. — Ville Kilkku

So that´s the magic behind the Green Base Plate.

We have seen how this platform relies on some elements that sound very familiar to any designer.

A system based in components
A wide component library
A styleguide
A design system

But top most, and what helps in the expansion of the limits of the platform, a set of stories that serve as a starting point for creating new different scenarios and enable the creation of infinite new stories and experiences.

In this sense, what we´ve seen applied to LEGO is not different from what we can define and apply on to our Digital Platforms or products to help them grow as much as we want and need them to.

This post is part of a talk that took place at Infragistics, Montevideo in the context of the IxDA Montevideo Meetups. You may follow on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram!

The magic behind LEGO´s Green Base Plate was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The magic behind LEGO´s Green Base Plate

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