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Rhys5
Rhys5
December 19, 2023

Loop design pattern without creating a component

  • December 19, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 417 views

Often in early stage features, the owner of the Design System may feel hesitant about adding a new component when it’s only instance is on a single page. The Engineer/Designer may make the call to keep the design pattern local, but still loop/re-use the design pattern. At the moment this can be achieved by keeping the Figma component local and repeating it, or not turn it into a component, repeat it, and deal with the time-consuming changes.

figma idea

1 reply

Armin_Rouhanian
Armin_Rouhanian
Active Member
December 19, 2023

Hey there @Rhys5

As you mentioned, one solution is to create a local component only to test a new “list item” and duplicate its instance. But it might be cool if we had a way to make a design pattern, just like components.

This is also achievable with “placeholder components”. it’s not a tool, but an approach. you create a component containing some smaller “placeholder component”, that can be replaced by other components. a “placeholder component” is like an empty frame with some unnatrual border color. just to make it noticable that it’s only a placeholder, not a real component for design system. and with the “instance property” you can easily swap it with the desired component.

For repetitive things like list-items, you can also check this post:

Vote for that one if you believe it is the same as your idea. That one has more votes.

Armin The Riverman
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