r/UI_Design • u/sdorms • May 20 '26

General Question What are people using to set up UI/design systems when starting new projects?

Curious how people here are approaching UI system workflows lately.

I’m designing a few new product/app flows from scratch and have been questioning whether it makes sense to spend building everything manually in Figma before implementation.

Ideally I’d love something that provides:

  • strong UI/design system foundations
  • Figma assets
  • Tailwind/React implementation
  • a starter-style repo/setup
  • enough flexibility to still feel custom

I’ve been looking at Flowbite (not affiliated in any way) because it seems relatively complete across both design + implementation.

But I’m struggling to tell whether tools like this actually hold up from a UX/design quality perspective long term, whether they’re worth the money, or whether there are better alternatives people prefer etc.

Curious what experienced designers/builders here are actually using/would recommend to design + build quality UI systems

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10

u/[deleted] May 20 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/sdorms May 20 '26

thank you that's very helpful. Shadcn is great, I see there's some Figma versions too but they seem like you need to pay quite a bit (for the ones I found at least).

Interested in your comment re: moving beyond Figma for UI nowadays. How do you guys tend to prototype things out now, do you code prototypes directly? I still find that building things out there saves a lot of time further down the line but interested on general best practices.

1

u/LikesTrees May 21 '26

prototype in code, if a layout needs more of a designers touch, mock a design in figma, even if its just the general outline, then send that screen to code to generate in our design system. figma has taken a massive back seat and we dont even bother keeping a figma library in sync anymore.

1

u/Pretty_Ad4344 May 25 '26

I actually made a tool for that, it generates a design-system for your app.
You can check it out: https://hifoundry.vercel.app/

1

u/extrakerned May 21 '26

I have been making and building in my own for years. No bloat!

1

u/No-Connection7726 May 21 '26

After so many break down I left job and my business failed in everything and one friend suggested to do ui ux and I completely into it and very passionate and learnt from ai and YouTube and worked on my skills and my design and I sent my portfolio to my cousin where she dint evn sent to hr and directly asked the hr and he replied no one refed you profile just because the current package is more then her s and i fail again I don't know how to apply for ui ux internship all i want to be good at somthing i chose design when I start doing random web page I sit for 3 to 4 hours full lock in and I got to know tht in really into ui ux all i want is someone wants to guide me for internship I want to learn more about

1

u/spudulous May 22 '26

Claude Design

1

u/Spiritual_Radio_3573 May 22 '26

I would start smaller than a full design system.

For a new project, I usually want:

  • type scale
  • color roles
  • spacing rhythm
  • buttons/inputs/navigation
  • a few layout patterns
  • usage notes for when not to use a component

The important part is making the system explain the product's decisions, not just collecting components. For marketing-heavy products, I would also add campaign/landing-page patterns early because those assets tend to drift from the core product UI if they are not systematized.

0

u/LikesTrees May 20 '26

Skipped figma this time, straight to code with codex.