[ryanSrich]

That seems like it has some value for super large teams. I guess the thing I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around is the workflow for a tool like this. My current understanding is that you'd need:

1.) Design your thing in Sketch

2.) Code your thing in a text editor

3.) Port your code over to this new tool to see it rendered in Sketch?

Like I said. There's some value there (accounting for the changes between 1 & 2), but the workflow feels weird. Maybe someone from AirBnB design can jump in and enlighten me.

[jordanlev]

Yeah this confused me as well, but some other comments here clarify the situation: there's one sketch file that is the "design system" (containing the "components"), then a bunch of other sketch files for the actual pages of the site or screens of the app... it's only this "components" file that is generated from code. Sketch is used for the design of the pages/screens/etc, but they are pulling the components from the "design system" file.

As with most misunderstandings/disagreements/arguments in the programming world, this confusion arises from people in different contexts using a tool for one purpose, but not realizing that other people are in different situations trying to achieve different goals with those same tools.

(Specifically, if you are an agency or freelance designer/developer, and you are building a bunch of different sites, then this tool does not serve any useful purpose... but if you have an underlying "design system" and a large company with lots of different products all sharing the same basic design, and a large team to go with it,then this starts to make a lot more sense.)

[enra]

I work on the design system side. In size of Airbnb, you need some kind of design system, since the product fairly large, its changing every week, it's built for 4-6 platforms at the same time by dozens different teams and designers. Without a system the product design and therefore the product becomes chaotic and inconsistent over time.

I do think that design systems can be helpful for smaller, or even 1 person teams as well. It helps you to apply meaningful constrains for your design and reuse common components across the product to shorten development times.

With the library we have both designers and developers can construct completely new views or modifications fairly fast. https://twitter.com/karrisaarinen/status/849733176150773761

Where the React-Sketchapp comes in is help us to keep the system up to date for designers, and in the future build other tools that can help the design workflow.