A UI kit is a tool to help designers improve their design workflow. This is used to make website and app design making designers work a whole lot easier. This also speeds up the workflow without building different elements from scratch.
UI kits, also referred to as User Interface kits, is a collection of pre-made user interface components for both website and mobile projects. They are made with different color, style options allowing designers to create their own user interfaces and maintain brand consistency throughout the application. The designer can simply drag and drop these pre-made elements while making the screens.
The above is one small part of a UI kit where we are defining how the buttons should look while in different stages. Once we define an element, for example a button, it should be consistent throughout our design. This means we should not see and green buttons, if we have defined buttons in blue color, like the above example.
A Perfects UI Kit will have the following:
1. Colors Defined
General
2. Buttons
3. Icons
4. Typography
Layout
5. Grid system
6. Divider
7. Page Layout
8. Spacers
Navigation
9. Breadcrumb
10. Dropdown
11. Menu
12. Page Header
13. Pagination
14. Steps
Data Entry
15. AutoComplete
16. Cascader
17. Checkbox
18. Date Picker
19. Form
20. Input box
21. Input Number
22. Radio button
23. Rate
24. Select
25. Slider
26. Switch
27. Time Picker
28. Transfer
29. Tree Select
30. Upload
Data Display
31. Badge
32. Avatar
33. Calendar
34. Card
35. Carousel
36. Collapse
37. Comment
38. Descriptions
39. Empty state
40. Image frames
41. List
42. Popover
43. Segmented
44. Statistic
45. Table
46. Tabs
47. Tag
48. Timeline
49. Tooltip
50. Tree
Feedback
51. Alert
52. Drawer
53. Message
54. Modal
55. Notification
56. Pop confirmation
57. Progress
58. Result
59. Skeleton
Others
60. Anchor
Although this is the perfect list, it is not necessary a UI will have all these elements defined. It all depends on the purpose and need of the website your designing.
UI Kit Types
According to price. You can find a free UI kit which you can download through figma or through browsers. And you can find paid versions of the UI kit as well.
According to projects: You can find web-based UI kit, mobile based UI kit, android UI kit and IOS UI kit.
Tools to build the UI Kit: There are Adobe XD UI kits, Sketch UI kits, Figma UI kits and others.
According to different design styles: flat UI kits, minimalistic UI kits, modern UI kits, etc.
What are the differences between a UI kit and a design system kit?
A UI kit is a set of ready-to-use components, layouts, and templates that designers can directly use or even copy and paste into their designs for creating better products. It's like a fast tool that can help you speed up the entire design workflow process.
A design system kit is a series of design guidelines that can help designers design a component, logo or interaction for consistency across products and companies, even without direct communication. It's like a style guide book to help teams work more effectively.
In other words, it not only provides users with ready-to-use components but also explains how they can use these components in different situations and scenarios for keeping all products consistent. It is much more than a UI kit.
Some examples of UI Kit: