Bessie UI was initially designed as a UI kit for a friend’s website. However, during the process of creating it, I found so much enjoyment in it that I decided to make a copy of the original and started to iterate on it to address a different need.
I needed something for my freelance work
At that time, I had a lot of freelance UI/UX projects, so I needed a UI kit that I can quickly adapt to any project.
First, I tried to find a suitable one, but none fit into my needs. It was quite challenging to find a consistent and flexible UI kit on the market that supports common usability and accessibility patterns well. I even tried out a few paid ones, and I realized that I have to learn to use it and tailor it to every project as all had a learning curve but none was flexible enough.
As I already had a few years experience working with UI kits and design systems, and I already created a small one for my friends website, I decided to design my own. This proved quite difficult.
Working on Bessie UI in my free time
Creating the core elements, such as typography and colour system, and defining the list of necessary components required a lot of effort. It took me several months, and a considerable amount of work with lots of work over weekends to create the first, still 'alpha' version of Bessie UI.
I almost dropped the project
I thought it would be a fairly easy task with the experience I already had in design systems and UI kits, so I was embarrassed and stressed out because it was hard to accept that carefully crafting a complex UI kit alone is a tough task and that it takes a lot of time.
I struggled, but didn't stop
After a couple of months of battling with anxiety and tiredness, I decided to take a different approach. I focused on what makes me anxious about the project, and found solutions.
- I wasn't sure enough about what I do will work. So, I asked a UX/UI designer friend to look thoroughly through the UI kit and provide me with feedback.
- With his feedback, I could fix a lot of mistakes, and while iterating, I realized that I could only do this project step-by-step since designing a flexible enough UI kit alone took a lot of time and effort.
So I allowed myself to slow down, and I learned more about my limits and iterated on my general approach to projects.
How did Bessie UI help later?
I used the first usable version for more than five projects; continued iterating on it and added new elements throughout the projects as soon as I realized what the current version of Bessie UI was missing.
At every stage of Bessie UI, it helped me tremendously. Not only because I didn't need to recreate components, but it also came with the much needed flexibility, and provided me a familiar tool since I designed most of it.
It came with a nice suprise: it cut the UI design time in half!
What happened with Bessie UI?
Throughout the aforementioned five projects, it grew and grew. In the meantime, I decided to release it to the public to gather even more feedback.
After releasing it in the Figma Community, I received the feedback I needed, and continued growing and fine-tuning Bessie with my new source of feedback as well.
After releasing it in the Figma Community, I received the feedback I needed, and continued growing and fine-tuning Bessie with my new source of feedback as well.
Nowadays, I aim to release updates and fixes whenever I have time to work on it so I don't stress over it much.
Next steps
Since Bessie UI reached its first milestone of getting published on Gumroad as a paid resource, the Figma Community version will start to differ from the Full version.
My goal is to update the Full version of Bessie as often as I can, but since I work alone on the project in my free time, I appreciate any feedback and help from anyone!
Notes on the paid version
The current version (v1.0) is the same as what you can find in the
Figma Community. This is why this version is a pay-what-you-want version. New
updates are going to be available only in the paid version. For testing purposes, the Figma Community version will stay but won't receive the same updates as the paid version.
