Unlocking Seamless Collaboration: Design-First APIs for UI Components

Treat UI components like APIs. This design-first contract eliminates development bottlenecks and unlocks powerful automation for your design system.

#1about 4 minutes

Overcoming collaboration challenges in UI component development

The typical development process creates delays and context switching when one team consumes components built by another.

#2about 3 minutes

Treating component interfaces as communication contracts

Just as APIs serve as contracts between services, a well-defined component interface can serve as a contract between development teams.

#3about 1 minute

Implementing a design-first approach for UI components

Involve all stakeholders, including providers and consumers, to define a component's API before any implementation work begins.

#4about 3 minutes

Why web components are ideal for framework-agnostic UI

Using framework-agnostic web components prevents upgrade deadlocks and ensures the long-term reusability of your UI library across different technologies.

#5about 1 minute

Understanding the API surface of a web component

A web component's API consists of properties for input, events for output, slots for content placement, and CSS variables for styling.

#6about 3 minutes

Introducing the custom elements manifest standard

The custom elements manifest is a standardized, machine-readable JSON file that describes a web component's API for consumption by various development tools.

#7about 3 minutes

Defining a component's API with a skeleton component

A skeleton component defines the complete API with properties, events, and JSDoc comments, serving as a single source of truth for generating the manifest file.

#8about 3 minutes

Auto-generating interactive documentation and playgrounds

The custom elements manifest enables tools to automatically generate interactive documentation where developers can test properties, styles, and events in a live playground.

#9about 4 minutes

Leveraging automation as a gift for development workflows

A manifest file unlocks powerful automation for linting, testing, generating wrapper components, and providing rich IDE integration with code completion.

#10about 1 minute

Recap of the design-first component development workflow

A summary of using communication contracts, a design-first approach, web components, and the custom elements manifest to achieve seamless collaboration.