UI Toolkit: What It Is And How to Use It
Using available tools correctly is vital to UX/UI designers. A UI kit is comparable to a magic wand for a novice designer, allowing them to generate professional work. If this tool is of interest to you, keep reading to find out more.
What Is A UI Kit?
A UI agency team or a designer compiles a set of graphics using their particular design tools, saves it to a file format like PSD or Sketch, then offers it for sale or places it in the public domain as a package. Interested users can then download it for their interface.
This saves users time because they don’t need to create all of the design elements on their own, as all the buttons, fields, and forms are premade and packaged up by the designer. The active components in place can be altered to suit the user’s needs while utilizing a similar interface style with the same element logic. Designers often create such UI kits and place them up for sale through various web and mobile platforms, including multimedia apps and online stores.
What Solutions Does A UI Kit Provide?
While helpful with some projects, a grouped set of UI components is not always suitable. Those projects that can benefit from a UI toolkit, however, can do so in the following ways:
● Streamlining Complex Projects: If your project needs to have subsequent pages aligned with existing ones, a user interface is a good solution for keeping the necessary flowing uniformity throughout the interface.
● Compiling Knowledge Bases: Transfer and sharing of knowledge can be complicated when multiple designers and developers work simultaneously on various parts of the project. When new team members join the team, they also need a centralized reference center to get the information necessary to answer their questions. Rather than the more unique people eating up the time of seasoned designers, a UI kit can be used to establish a knowledge base center to answer many of the most common questions.
● Expedite The Working Process: More than anything, UI kits help to save time as it saves the designer from needing to draw elements to use on each part of the interface from scratch. Using the UI kit’s provided details, the designer can use them for a consistently flowing interface.
To summarize, if you have a large team with potentially new members working on a complex project that needs to be completed quickly, a UI toolkit would be a valuable tool to leverage in your efforts.
What Is Included In A UI Toolkit?
The UI toolkit will vary based on what the designer created the particular kit for. The UI toolkit you need will be different depending on the design project you want to use it for. This may include e-commerce websites, corporate websites, music players, and blogs. Here are some elements commonly found in UI kits:
Navigational Elements
Scrolling elements, pop-ups with text, drop-down menus, hamburger icons, etc.
Forms
Registration, feedback, checkout, and any other form types a user may need to fill out.
Widgets
These are all critical website dashboard indicators, including the latest Instagram photo posts, weather notifications, subscriber numbers, exchange rates, etc.
Footers
Online stores and landing pages sometimes utilize footers for holding contact information.
Blog Elements
Formats for displaying articles and news items.
Input And Control Fields
Input fields, buttons, and other standard fields are typically used for information input and transfer.
E-commerce Components
Various filtering methods, identifying, displaying types, displaying related products, or a “recently watched” link.
Where Can Some Examples Of UI Kits Be Found?
Designers create UI kits as packages of presentable elements that can be put together to display in a prebuilt interface. Designers put these UI kits together as a self-contained pack and make them available for sale, often listing them on trading platforms specializing in user interface toolsuch as Creative Market, Designmodo Market, and others.
While it is theoretically possible to make a universal UI toolkit or even use the same kit for different projects, typically, these UI kits are developed with a specific project in mind, taking the client’s corporate identity and business objectives into account. Many services, like GraphicBurger and Freebiesbug, offer free UI kits. This is especially helpful to designing beginners as it is a budget-friendly way to develop budget-friendly solutions for their developing interfaces.
UI kits are also great for inspiration to ultimately devise one’s interface. It essentially serves as a working example. When one designer observes another designer’s work, they can learn to notice particular details and learn from the presented product. A newer designer can combine the theory of what they learned with the practice through engagement with an existing example, taking the best aspects of it for their future experience, which ultimately leads to their growth as a designer.
Conclusion
If you’re wondering if you should develop a UI toolkit, the answer is undoubtedly yes. Even if it is just being created for personal use or experience, a designer can learn a lot from putting it together. Of course, it can also be sold, allowing for the knowledge and skills to be monetized. Most websites will pay a commission for selling a UI toolkit, but for those who want to keep all of the money for their hard work, services like Gumroad can be used.
It’s also possible to share the prepared UI toolkit free of charge or to prepare a scaled-down, free version through sites like GraphicBurger or Freebiesbug. This will provide an experience of sharing UI kits and raise one’s value as a designer in the eyes of prospective clients.
Thanks for reading!
Check out my UI/UX agencies rating and another article below:
