Atomic design is a methodology for creating design systems. It became popular in 2018 and has been used on some of the world’s most successful digital products like iOS and macOS. Everything is made of atoms in the chemical world, and the same theory could be applied to a design system.
For example, texts can be considered as atoms, so do their fonts and sizes. If we combine an atom with another atom, we can get a button, and that is a molecule.
If we put different molecules together, we get a page with consistent design styles and structures. Companies use atomic design for good reasons.
First, they are adaptive and flexible, which means that any of your new functions and pages will have the same style as your previous ones. You can easily add or subtract functions, and your users can quickly tell that they are using the same product.
Second, atomic design makes things much easier for your developers. With limited UI elements, a developer won’t confuse one function from the other, making it easier to expedite the development process, and your next release can go online sooner.