Savant
A token-driven system adorned with history's geniuses, at home in light and dark. Foundations, components, and patterns for building with confidence, by Average Genius.
Savant is the single source of truth for how Average Genius products look, feel, and behave. Every color, control, and pattern is defined once, proven in light and dark, and held to WCAG AA, so a team builds from settled decisions instead of re-deciding the same details on every screen.
It is deliberately opinionated. One canonical way to do each thing, a token model in place of hard-coded values, and accessibility treated as the floor rather than a feature.
What's inside
Philosophy
None of this is doctrine. It is simply what has worked for me, and every team finds its own methods and rhythm. These are mine.
Start with a solution, not the problem
A problem has infinitely many paths out of it. Open one to a room of stakeholders, most with limited UX instinct, and every opinion pulls in a different direction. That is how you get paralysis by analysis: too many possibilities and no vision to cut through them.
So I start with a solution and work backward. A concrete proposal gives everyone something real to react to, and the conversation shifts from "what should this be" to "here is how we make this sharper." You keep the direction. Stakeholders refine it instead of dictating it from a blank page.
Ship early, test often
Building has never been faster or cheaper. The old workflow poured its hours into static mockups and left almost nothing for testing, unless you were lucky enough to have a dedicated researcher. That math has flipped.
In the time it once took to produce a single polished design and test it once, you can put a real, working prototype in front of people and refine it a dozen times. A picture of an interface tells you almost nothing. Real interaction tells you everything. So I ship early, watch how people actually use it, and let that drive the next version.
If it feels wrong, it is wrong
You are the most forgiving user your product will ever have. You built it, you know where everything lives, and you already know what it is meant to do. So when a flow feels clunky, confusing, or slow to you, it will be far worse for someone seeing it cold.
That flicker of doubt is not something to talk yourself out of. It is the earliest and cheapest signal you will get. Trust it, and fix the thing before you convince yourself it is fine.
Use AI, without apology
You are no longer just a designer or just a developer. You are the conductor, and the tools are the orchestra. The craft is no longer building every part by hand. It is knowing exactly what you want, then directing the work until you get there.
No one has ever cared how long a product took to build or how hard it was. They care that it is high quality, that it works, and that it solves their problem. Judge the output, never the effort behind it.
Lose the ego
The solution you are proud of is not you. The moment you tie your identity to a particular design, you stop seeing its flaws and start defending it instead of improving it. Hold every idea loosely enough to throw it away when a better one shows up.
So QA your own work like an outsider would. Try to break it, hunt for what is weak, and fix it before anyone else has to. And when criticism comes, do not take it personally. It is aimed at the work, not at you, and the person offering it is on the same team, pulling in the same direction. Wanting that feedback is how the product gets better, and faster.