uxdesign.cc – User Experience Design — Medium | Audrey Hacq

Well I think it’s no secret anymore: I’m a big fan of Design Systems!

My new purpose in life: free up time for designers so they can do more interesting stuff than seeking into 20 files to find the final version of an icon or re-do for the 4th time this famous focus input state…

Now that we’re all convinced that we must stop designing pages and start designing components (don’t tell me you’re not 😉 the second step is now to share these components among designers.

Working with components is great but being able to share them among designers is so much better!

And in order to share these components, be sure that they are up to date and so that everyone works with the same raw material, what better solution than shared libraries?

Comparing existing shared libraries

So I’ve started to compare the existing services in order to find which one was the more efficient, according to what I wanted to do.

The following table recaps the main features I expect from a good shared library and compares Craft, Zero Height, Lingo and the new native library from Sketch:

Now we can detail each tool, in order to understand what the main differences are between this services:

Craft Library plugin

For the record, Craft is a Sketch plugin, developed by Invision that allows you to do many things: prototyping, duplicate content, easily out random content in your design and share your components… That’s a lot for one plugin and I’m not quite sure that this latest feature is their priority for now…

The negative points that I see in Craft are:

• I can’t decide who has the right to edit the library and who can just use it, since this permission system is, to my opinion, mandatory when we want to work with several designers.
• I don’t like the way it manages folders; it’s not really easy to find the components I am looking for:

Components are grouped into “folders”

• The plugin isn’t really ergonomic nor easy to use…

Guess what: Craft wouldn’t not be my first choice 😉

Zero Height

Zero height is an online service that creates Style Guides directly from your Sketch file.

Pros

• One of the biggest advantages of Zero Height is the creation of that well-organized Style Guide that anyone with the link can access:

• The folders’s management system is helpful and great to find quickly what we’re looking for :

• There is also a history of every component so I know who did the last edit of a component and when. However, I can’t restore one of these versions… Too bad 🙁

Cons

• I can’t choose where I want to store my library… It will automatically be saved on Zero Height’s servers.
• I can’t choose who in my team can edit the library and who can just use it and for me, it’s really missing…
• This service is not free. We have to pay (after a short trial period) and I don’t see enough advantages in Zero Height yet for investing some money in it.

Lingo

Here we can talk!

Ok, now I can tell you the truth: Lingo is one of my favorites (and no, I do not own any stock of that company 😉

Pros

• The filling of the library is really simple: once I’ve prepared my Sketch file with all the symbols, shared styles and text styles, I just have to hit the “push all” button and bam, everything is synchronised!

Synchronising all my assets in one click!

• I can check every component that I will “pull” or “push” in the library, which reduces errors’ possibilities:

I can control every update of components before pushing or pulling them.

• Just as Zero Height, Lingo creates a beautiful online Style Guide that everyone with the link can access:

Online Style Guide that I can share with the world!

• Permissions and rights!! I can decide who will be able to edit or not the library:

I can decide who will be able to edit or just use the library.

• I haven’t seen components’ versioning for now but I can see recently deleted assets and restore them:

I can view the last deleted components and restore them if I want

Two other very good points for Lingo that makes it a great tool to manage complex design systems:

• I can import other assets than Sketch ones: jpeg, png, gif, tiff, svg, eps and pdf files.
• I can also download the assets into different files extensions directly from the online version. That’s very convenient, especially for the other team members who need to use components using other softs (as PowerPoint or Keynote for example)!!

Drag&drop any assets in 4 extensions, directly from the online version

Cons

Even if, for me, Lingo is one of the best shared library I’ve tested, here are some points which could make you choose another solution (as the Sketch native library, for example):

• It’s not a free service: you have to pay when you exceed 150 assets (which occurs very very quickly)
• It’s also a plugin and that means that it’s dependent on Sketch’ evolutions and that the components are stocked on their servers
• The online Style Guide is a little bit messy because components are stored in sections and not in folders (as with Zero Height, for example) so it’s visually less clear… However, there is a great search and tag systems so you can easily find the components you’re looking for.

Sketch Library

And last but not least, Sketch has (finally) launched its own shared library!

It doesn’t work exactly the same way than the others, first of all because, here, it’s a Sketch file that becomes the library:

I can define a Sketch file as a shared library.

Then, I can use all the symbols of that file in any other document:

I can use all the symbols of that files in any other document.

These symbols become linked assets and, of course, every time I will change something in the library file, it will automatically change it everywhere!

The little icon near the layer’s name means that these assets are linked to the library.

Pros

• It’s not a plugin, it’s native with Sketch! That means no additional cost and no issue with the future releases of Sketch
• I can choose where I want to stock the library file (Dropbox, Drive, Cloud…) and avoid being dependent on another service subscription
• No more symbols page (and that’s quite a revolution ;): every linked symbol appears now as an external link. You can manipulate it without entering the symbol instance:

Say goodbye to the symbols’ page!

• Thanks to a clear message, I know when I’m editing the library file; it’s impossible to make a change by mistake:

You know when you are editing the library file

• Permissions! thanks to Dropbox, I’m able to give “edit” rights to the designers and “view” rights to the others… Which allows them anyway to use the components and to make a lot of tests with it!

Cons

Ok I know, that feature has just been launched a couple of weeks ago so I’ll be forgiving, but I have to say that some essential things are still missing:

• I can’t insert colour nor text styles in the library… Yet they are really important elements when you create a Design System and that should be the first element we want to share! For now, I’ve handled some text styles into my symbols but it’s not the best way to deal with it:

Text styles in symbols… Not the best way to deal with it!

• It’s really not easy to import a symbol… I have to pick it in the symbol menu and that’s not as quick as a drag&drop system… And there is no search bar to facilitate the work neither. Even with the Runner plugin, I don’t find it convenient.

• When something changes in the library, I only have a little message in the top right corner of my document. Too bad for such an important feature…

A little (little little) message aware me that there are updates in the library…

• And the worst bug for me: when I copy/paste an element that was linked to the library from one file to another, it looses its link and becomes a normal symbol… Nooooooo 🙁

A copy/paste from one document to another breaks the link to the library 🙁

Quick tips : you can use the plugin symbol remplacer which works really well until they fix that bug.

So even if this new feature is really cool, there are still small things that have to be improved before being really efficient and speeding up our workflow.

Conclusion

I think you’ve got it, even if Lingo and Sketch are ahead, I haven’t found the perfect solution for sharing a design system yet… As always, it depends on what you want to do with it, what kind of project, how many members you have in your team etc…

For this article, I was focused on Sketch but I keep in mind that there are other tools like Figma that also proposes a shared library. I also keep an eye on Invision who has just acquired Brand.ai and whose new Design System Manager may completely change the story!

We are just at the very beginning of this new shared library era and I can’t wait to see all the evolutions that are about to come!

If you know other services or have some experiences with shared libraries too, don’t be shy and leave a comment!

Shared libraries: which one to use? was originally published in uxdesign.cc on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.