The importance of a simple, focused, and flexible data schema
Ever since the early days of my career in software engineering and design, I've felt that the simple card is the most flexible and robust way to structure a data schema. Every display for every piece of data seems to have a(n):
- Icon
- Badge
- Label
- Title
- Subtitle
- Media container
- Body content
- Link text
- Link URL
- Content container
- Card surface
I've added some optional extras for my typical use cases:
- Attribution image
- Attribution name
- Attribution description
- Attribution link
This flexible schema can be displayed in an almost infinite number of ways, and it has helped me build dozens of enterprise design systems.
When I recently found this article from Ikea's design team, it felt great to see my position validated by an industry giant, especially considering we had almost exactly the same fields for our data schema.
About the author
Brandon is an engineer who loves leading, planning, designing, growth and analytics.
Five books everyone should read:
Are Your Lights On, The First 90 Days, Elements of Persuasion, Humans vs Computers, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
Favorite quotes:
- Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.
- If a park ranger warns you about the bears, it ain’t cause he’s trying to keep all the bear hugs for himself.
- A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.