Sunday 11 January 2015

IBM's Design Language Is No Bootstrap killer

Reinventing IBM in recent years has revolved mainly around the cloud and analysis. But Big Blue has also been imposed in areas normally populated by startups and small businesses, faster - not that their efforts in these new areas have been entirely successful.



  IBM's latest move in this vein is a set of web design guidelines that bring the material mind design Google or Twitter Bootstrap. But IBM's goals are much more modest projects - and from the look of it, much less immediately useful.

The IBM design language, the new framework has been in the works for about a year, according to a blog detailing the project. IBM justification for the design language is "unity, not uniformity", and aims to be "more instructive than prescriptive". This translates into less emphasis on stock designs or templates and more emphasis on the guidelines and concepts.

"Patterns Off-the-shelf and templates would actually stifle innovation we designed the language to encourage" says the blog. Rather, the design concepts revolve around a set of experiences - how users discover something, start working with him, get help with it, expand it, and so on.

To this end, do not look to the resources provided by IBM for the design language for a site experience outside the box similar to Bootstrap design or even a set of elements of Web visualization in line with Design of Materials. Among the few resources provided are a template for icons Adobe Illustrator, calculator-type scale and color analysis online tool (both provided by websites that are not IBM), and a set of color palettes.

The IBM component provides that most resembles nothing Bootstrap materials or design is a color mixing system-SASS. The rest of what IBM is offering advice and design philosophies along with some examples.

If I Design Language is not out of eclipsing Bootstrap or materials design, what is the real plan? One possibility is that IBM aims to provide a comprehensive set of design guidelines to influence applications emerging from its recent partnership with Apple, and the future work of Watson and Bluemix use the services of ramp. It makes sense that everything has a consistent appearance and behavior.

IBM declared strategy is to Design Language "intentionally created to evolve through feedback from product teams and users." But if IBM wants others to draw on what it's created, you may find you have specific, concrete examples that can releveraged is a privileged way to do that - in other words, the same templates and widgets that IBM avoided in the name of not stifle innovation.