How it all started
UX House was founded in late 2019 by Ruby, myself, and a few people in a mutual UX Discord server together. Little did we know that this Discord server would flourish during the height of the Covid pandemic in 2020 and the years that followed. We hosted bi-weekly design critiques and monthly game nights. These online events eased the effects of isolation on our members and we had a lot of fun hanging out together.
The discord server banner I made, parodying a Waffle House sign
The beginnings of a design system, also known as Habitat
After a while, we wanted to create a website to attract and organically grow our membership. We like to go all-out on things, even when it's just for fun, so we created a design system.
The main goals we set out to achieve with Habitat were:
1. Create a flexible design system that easily adapted to whatever we wanted the site to be,
2. Attract members to the Discord server,
3. Create a living base of articles to reach a larger audience.
1. Create a flexible design system that easily adapted to whatever we wanted the site to be,
2. Attract members to the Discord server,
3. Create a living base of articles to reach a larger audience.
Hitting the ground running with groundwork and atoms
Ruby provided the license and funding for the Figma team and all the groundwork we needed to get ourselves started.
Then we began work on the atoms and components of the design system in 2020.
Then we began work on the atoms and components of the design system in 2020.
Site expansion
In 2021 we focused on expanding Habitat to include pages and components for articles. This included article cards, content tags, and other pages.
Next steps
Even in its current minimal state the website has been very effective in attracting members to the Discord server.
We’ve tripled our size at a faster rate than anticipated since it was launched in 2020.
We’ve tripled our size at a faster rate than anticipated since it was launched in 2020.
For the future, we plan to populate UX House's content page with articles and we hope to have some written soon.
Main takeaways
This was my first time working with other designers in a team and my first exposure to design systems.
Here's what I learned:
1. Collaboration is a lot of hard work.
2. Design systems are hard to keep organized.
Here's what I learned:
1. Collaboration is a lot of hard work.
2. Design systems are hard to keep organized.
I also learned a lot about what I could bring to the table as a junior designer among all of the more seasoned designers and developers on the team. I'm grateful for everyone who has given me advice and direction on my components and screens. And finally, none of this would have been possible without Ruby and these lovely people.
The whole UX House team