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Design Systems: Building and Maintaining Consistent UI/UX

In the world of product design, consistency is the cornerstone of delivering a seamless user experience. As digital products evolve and scale, the challenge of maintaining design consistency across multiple platforms, teams, and touchpoints becomes more complex. This is where design systems come in. A design system is a comprehensive set of guidelines, components, and tools that help designers and developers create a consistent and cohesive user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). From a designer’s perspective, building and maintaining a design system requires a strategic approach to ensure scalability, flexibility, and alignment with business goals.

Why Design Systems Matter?

Design systems are more than just style guides or pattern libraries. They offer a unified language for design and development, bridging the gap between creativity and functionality. Here are a few reasons why they are critical:

  1. Consistency Across Products

      One of the primary goals of a design system is to ensure uniformity across different platforms and devices. When users interact with a product, whether on a website or a mobile app, they expect a consistent experience. A well-implemented design system ensures that visual elements, interactions, and behaviors are aligned, offering a familiar and intuitive experience for users.

2. Faster Iteration

      With a design system in place, teams can reuse components and patterns rather than reinventing the wheel for each new feature. This speeds up the design and development process, allowing teams to focus on solving new problems instead of reworking existing designs. For designers, it means less time spent on repetitive tasks and more time dedicated to innovation.

3. Scalability

     As products grow and new features are added, maintaining a coherent UI/UX without a design system can become chaotic. A design system provides a scalable framework, enabling teams to add new elements or modules without compromising the overall consistency of the product.

4. Improved Collaboration

      A design system fosters collaboration between designers, developers, and other stakeholders by providing a shared language and reference point. This ensures that design decisions are communicated effectively, reducing friction and misunderstandings between teams.

Building a Design System: A Designer’s Perspective

Designing a system from scratch can seem like a daunting task, but with a clear roadmap and understanding of core principles, it becomes a powerful tool for creating scalable and user-centered products.

1. Define the Core Principles

Before diving into visual components, it’s essential to establish the core principles of your design system. These principles serve as the foundation and guide decision-making throughout the process. Ask yourself:

• What are the key values of your brand?

• How should the design reflect the needs and emotions of users?

• What goals are you trying to achieve with your design system (e.g., accessibility, flexibility, innovation)?

   For instance, if accessibility is a top priority, you’ll need to ensure that your design system accommodates users with different abilities, by providing color contrast guidelines, clear typographic hierarchies, and accessible components.

2. Create a Unified Visual Language

Once the principles are established, the next step is creating a cohesive visual language. This includes defining elements such as:

Color Palette: A well-structured color palette ensures harmony across different UI components. It’s crucial to include primary, secondary, and accent colors, along with usage guidelines to avoid inconsistency.

Typography: Define a typography system that establishes hierarchies and clarity, including font styles, sizes, line heights, and spacing. Consistent typography helps users navigate content effortlessly.

Spacing and Grids: An established grid system ensures a balanced layout and harmony between different UI elements. Proper spacing guidelines prevent crowded or misaligned components.

Iconography and Illustrations: Design guidelines for icons and illustrations help maintain visual consistency. Icons should follow a standard style (outlined, filled) and size, ensuring they align with the overall visual language.

(I

Iconography and Illustrations: Design guidelines for icons and illustrations help maintain visual consistency. Icons should follow a standard style (outlined, filled) and size, ensuring they align with the overall visual language.

Image Source: https://designerup.co/blog/10-best-design-systems-and-how-to-learn-and-steal-from-them/)

3. Design Reusable Components

A design system is incomplete without reusable UI components. These components include buttons, forms, modals, and navigation elements that can be used across various features and pages. Each component should be:

Modular: Components should be flexible and adaptable for different contexts. For example, a button should have variations for different states (hover, active, disabled) and types (primary, secondary, destructive).

Documented: Each component needs comprehensive documentation that explains how it should be used, its variants, and the rules governing its application. This ensures consistency when different team members use the same component.

4. Implement Accessibility Guidelines

Accessibility should be at the forefront of every design system. As a designer, consider:

Color Contrast: Ensure sufficient contrast between text and background for readability.

Keyboard Navigation: Ensure that interactive components are navigable via keyboard for users who rely on keyboard shortcuts.

Responsive Design: Components should be responsive, adapting seamlessly across different screen sizes and devices.

Assistive Technologies: Design components should be compatible with screen readers and other assistive technologies to provide an inclusive experience.

Maintaining a Design System: Evolving with the Product

Once a design system is in place, the work doesn’t stop there. Maintaining it requires ongoing effort as the product evolves and new design challenges emerge. Here’s how designers can ensure the design system remains relevant and effective:

1. Regular Audits and Updates

A design system should be treated as a living document that evolves with the product. Regular audits are necessary to identify outdated or unused components. Designers should collaborate with developers to ensure new features are aligned with the existing design system, and updates should be documented to avoid fragmentation.

2. Version Control and Documentation

Version control is essential for keeping track of changes in the design system. Documenting why and how changes are made ensures that the design system grows in an organized manner. It also helps onboard new team members quickly, as they can reference updated guidelines.

3. Foster Collaboration Across Teams

Designers need to maintain an open line of communication with developers and other teams using the design system. Tools like Figma, Sketch, and Zeplin allow designers to share components and guidelines in real-time, fostering collaboration and ensuring that everyone is aligned.

Some well-known examples of design systems that have set benchmarks in the industry:

1. Google Material Design

  • URL: Material Design
  • Overview: Google’s Material Design is one of the most comprehensive design systems available. It provides guidelines on how to create visual, motion, and interaction design across platforms and devices. Material Design is known for its grid-based layouts, responsive animations, and depth effects like shadows and lighting.
  • Features:
    • Comprehensive color palettes, typography, and iconography.
    • Extensive component library (buttons, cards, etc.).
    • Customizable UI components for both web and mobile applications.

2. Salesforce Lightning Design System

  • URL: Salesforce Lightning
  • Overview: Salesforce’s Lightning Design System provides a comprehensive library of UI components and resources to help build applications on the Salesforce platform. It ensures a consistent experience across Salesforce products and enables developers to create custom apps easily.
  • Features:
    • Ready-to-use components, design tokens, and code snippets.
    • Comprehensive accessibility guidelines to ensure inclusivity.
    • Detailed documentation for developers to integrate components into Salesforce applications.

3. Microsoft Fluent Design System

  • URL: Fluent Design
  • Overview: Fluent Design is Microsoft’s design system, created to provide an engaging and scalable UI across all Microsoft products. It is heavily focused on interaction, animation, and motion while ensuring accessibility across various device ecosystems.
  • Features:
    • Focus on depth, motion, and light to create modern and interactive UIs.
    • Cross-platform components supporting web, desktop, and mobile applications.
    • Accessible components with detailed guidelines for developers.

Conclusion

Building and maintaining a design system is an investment that pays off in the long run. It ensures consistency across your product, improves collaboration between teams, and allows for faster iteration and scalability. For designers, a design system is more than a collection of reusable components — it’s a framework that enables you to create user-centric products with confidence and clarity. By embracing modularity, documentation, and accessibility, you’ll ensure that your design system remains a valuable asset as your product grows.

About the Author:

Shristi is a creative professional with a passion for visual storytelling. She recently transitioned from the world of video and motion graphics to the exciting field of product design at Mantra Labs. When she’s not designing, she enjoys watching movies, traveling, and sharing her experiences through vlogs.

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Smart Manufacturing Dashboards: A Real-Time Guide for Data-Driven Ops

Smart Manufacturing starts with real-time visibility.

Manufacturing companies today generate data by the second through sensors, machines, ERP systems, and MES platforms. But without real-time insights, even the most advanced production lines are essentially flying blind.

Manufacturers are implementing real-time dashboards that serve as control towers for their daily operations, enabling them to shift from reactive to proactive decision-making. These tools are essential to the evolution of Smart Manufacturing, where connected systems, automation, and intelligent analytics come together to drive measurable impact.

Data is available, but what’s missing is timely action.

For many plant leaders and COOs, one challenge persists: operational data is dispersed throughout systems, delayed, or hidden in spreadsheets. And this delay turns into a liability.

Real-time dashboards help uncover critical answers:

  • What caused downtime during last night’s shift?
  • Was there a delay in maintenance response?
  • Did a specific inventory threshold trigger a quality issue?

By converting raw inputs into real-time manufacturing analytics, dashboards make operational intelligence accessible to operators, supervisors, and leadership alike, enabling teams to anticipate problems rather than react to them.

1. Why Static Reports Fall Short

  • Reports often arrive late—after downtime, delays, or defects have occurred.
  • Disconnected data across ERP, MES, and sensors limits cross-functional insights.
  • Static formats lack embedded logic for proactive decision support.

2. What Real-Time Dashboards Enable

Line performance and downtime trends
Track OEE in real time and identify underperforming lines.

Predictive maintenance alerts
Utilize historical and sensor data to identify potential part failures in advance.

Inventory heat maps & reorder thresholds
Anticipate stockouts or overstocks based on dynamic reorder points.

Quality metrics linked to operator actions
Isolate shifts or procedures correlated with spikes in defects or rework.

These insights allow production teams to drive day-to-day operations in line with Smart Manufacturing principles.

3. Dashboards That Drive Action

Role-based dashboards
Dashboards can be configured for machine operators, shift supervisors, and plant managers, each with a tailored view of KPIs.

Embedded alerts and nudges
Real-time prompts, like “Line 4 below efficiency threshold for 15+ minutes,” reduce response times and minimize disruptions.

Cross-functional drill-downs
Teams can identify root causes more quickly because users can move from plant-wide overviews to detailed machine-level data in seconds.

4. What Powers These Dashboards

Data lakehouse integration
Unified access to ERP, MES, IoT sensor, and QA systems—ensuring reliable and timely manufacturing analytics.

ETL pipelines
Real-time data ingestion from high-frequency sources with minimal latency.

Visualization tools
Custom builds using Power BI, or customized solutions designed for frontline usability and operational impact.

Smart Manufacturing in Action: Reducing Market Response Time from 48 Hours to 30 Minutes

Mantra Labs partnered with a North American die-casting manufacturer to unify its operational data into a real-time dashboard. Fragmented data, manual reporting, delayed pricing decisions, and inconsistent data quality hindered operational efficiency and strategic decision-making.

Tech Enablement:

  • Centralized Data Hub with real-time access to critical business insights.
  • Automated report generation with data ingestion and processing.
  • Accurate price modeling with real-time visibility into metal price trends, cost impacts, and customer-specific pricing scenarios. 
  • Proactive market analysis with intuitive Power BI dashboards and reports.

Business Outcomes:

  • Faster response to machine alerts
  • Quality incidents traced to specific operator workflows
  • 4X faster access to insights led to improved inventory optimization.

As this case shows, real-time dashboards are not just operational tools—they’re strategic enablers. 

(Learn More: Powering the Future of Metal Manufacturing with Data Engineering)

Key Takeaways: Smart Manufacturing Dashboards at a Glance

AspectWhat You Should Know
1. Why Static Reports Fall ShortDelayed insights after issues occur
Disconnected systems (ERP, MES, sensors)
No real-time alerts or embedded decision logic
2. What Real-Time Dashboards EnableTrack OEE and downtime in real-time
Predictive maintenance using sensor data
Dynamic inventory heat maps
Quality linked to operators
3. Dashboards That Drive ActionRole-based views (operator to CEO)
Embedded alerts like “Line 4 down for 15+ mins”
Drilldowns from plant-level to machine-level
4. What Powers These DashboardsUnified Data Lakehouse (ERP + IoT + MES)
Real-time ETL pipelines
Power BI or custom dashboards built for frontline usability

Conclusion

Smart Manufacturing dashboards aren’t just analytics tools—they’re productivity engines. Dashboards that deliver real-time insight empower frontline teams to make faster, better decisions—whether it’s adjusting production schedules, triggering preventive maintenance, or responding to inventory fluctuations.

Explore how Mantra Labs can help you unlock operations intelligence that’s actually usable.

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