Achieve design consistency through code

or: a designer's perspective on ReactJs

In the last few weeks a major topic amongst all my friends in tech was ReactJs, some people saying how good it is, some people saying Angular is better, although they are completely different things. After a few discussions with my friend and colleague Weslley Araujo I decided to give ReactJs a try.

React, A javascript library for building user interfaces

That is the moment where I stop and think:

I'm a designer, why should I spend time learning that?

React like many other frameworks/libraries has it's core on componentization and for me that was the selling point.

ReactJs is a Javascript library created by Facebook and Instagram in order to build interfaces through components and views. Another big selling point is the "Learn Once, Write Anywhere" approach so with React Native you can write native mobile apps the same way you create web apps with ReactJs.

So, what now?

Well, I got curious so I had to check it out and It clearly states "A Javascript library for building user interfaces" and as a Designer that totally got my attention.

Once you head to their website you might find it quite hard to get started, it was not a plug and play kinda of thing, which I would expect as a designer who just knows enough javascript to… to… well, to do almost nothing. But that's when I found out about this Create React App, where you can basically get the package from npm:

$ npm install -g create-react-app

Run:

create-react-app hello-world

And you are good to go.

This basically removes the barrier for Designers that are not proficients with Javascript or setting up complex development environments (Like me).

But, as weird as it might seem, this article it's not about ReactJs, it's about design consistency and right now, ReactJs is my weapon of choice.