Quick framing note: this is one perspective from my review of the system, intended to surface questions, gaps, and opportunities as they appeared to me. Sharing it in the spirit of strengthening what’s already here and supporting ongoing collaboration.

• While Brad Frost’s Atomic Design was very influential on my thinking, I think the “Atoms, Molecules, Organisms” taxonomy can be a little overly complex and hard to distinguish. The distinction between molecules and Organisms in particular can be kind of overwrought. And most of the things listed in the “Atomos” section don’t even strike me as traditional Frostian atoms so much as they sound like design token groupings, which I often in my own work refer to as “sub atomic”. Not to extend the metaphor too much but I think this fits as design tokens form a sort of field that permeates everything rather than a specific atomic unit. I’m guessing the forefronting of this might be because of how the DaisyUI docs do so somewhat though I’m not clear on how structurally important that is for DaisyUI. DaisyUI appears to locate it’s “atoms” at the level of utility classes, which IMO even more so aligns it with design tokens and what I would think of as sub-atomic. So IMO while the Atomic Design metaphor can be useful to explain design systems to non designers I think we shouldn’t overly formalize levels. Instead it’s easier to just say there are basic shared values in design tokens, components, and some components are made of other components and beyond that there isn’t much strict demarcation of hierarchy.
• When we say that a component does not comply with the design system so it needs to be updated, what does that mean? Does that mean it needs to be updated in code, in wireframes, both?
  • Or perhaps what we’re needing to do is migrate the existing design system components to follow DaisyUI styling? I remember migrating the way design tokens were named was mentioned in the meeting.
• The big blue sections explaining Color, Typography etc, I think should probably be merged with the actual frames laying out that information.
• I think instead of “Use” in the color palette the term “Semantic role” might be clearer.
• Okay now I think I get it. The idea here is we need to move the current design system over to the DaisyUI styling. Is there a particular reason for this? Just trying to build alignment between the UI kit and code component library?
• Just found this: https://github.com/decidim/decidim/tree/develop/decidim-design What’s the interaction between this and our work? It looks like it’s basically the template library?
  • With co-pilots help I found the scss stylesheets
  • What’s the reasoning for moving over the design system to DaisyUI? This design system honestly seems mostly okay. I encounter a fair bit of jank on the metadecidim website but it doesn’t strike me as being at a component or styling level more like the way the components are composed together or the bugginess of implementation.
• While there is some division in the document at the beginning between molecules and organisms, within the actual pages showing the components themselves, this division makes zero appearance and has far as I can see, zero impact.

General decidim design feedback

I’m going to transition to talking more about decidim as it exists currently at metadecidim

• Whacky reflow here:

  

• This seems like fluff:

  

• This seems redundant… Design smell

  

• In general it feels like there’s a ton of bold used throughout the typography

  • Like 5 or 6 bolded pieces of text in just this tiny screen. Also a lot of all-caps, which studies show is bad for readability.

  

• lot of text here for a button

  

• I don’t see alignment between the title and the CTA which is a little confusing. The title is actually sort of more of a call to action in some ways? But I don’t see a connection between “Contribute” and “processes”. And I wouldn’t call “News” a process or a contribution….? Meetings and governance is a little better but still, weird. I’m having trouble understanding the Noun/Verb structure of decidim

• I know a lot of these problems are more instance implementation and content problems but it does indicate to me perhaps areas where Decidim’s design is lacking.
• I don’t get why this is here. Is this a nav menu? But there’s a nav menu up top. There’s also that home icon nav menu thing on other pages. Why are there so many different nav menus? And while I see a Navigation section in the Design System, there’s also a Menu component… and the difference is what? Why have both a Navigation and a Menu?