Design engineering · 5 min read · Draft
Design in code without becoming the frontend team
Writing the component you designed catches a whole class of problems early. It also eats your week if you let it. A working boundary.
I came to design from frontend, so building what I draw is natural. The hard part was learning where to stop. This is the boundary that has worked across three teams.
Own the components, not the pages
I write and maintain the design system components in Storybook: tokens, states, RTL behaviour, accessibility. Engineers compose pages from them. When a page needs a new pattern, the pattern comes to me; the page does not.
<Button variant="primary" dir="rtl" loading>
تأكيد الطلب
</Button>Prototype in code, ship through the team
Prototypes are mine, and they are disposable. They prove a behaviour against real data, then the team rebuilds them properly. Trying to “promote” a prototype to production is where the week disappears.
Review as a designer
I review pull requests for visual and interaction fidelity, not architecture. It keeps the design honest without turning me into a bottleneck.
