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Productized UI Development w/ StorybookJS

Everyone has seen Brett's success @DesignJoy recently, and it has inspired a lot of people to jump in to productizing their own services. Developers in particular are looking for somewhat manageable/scalable ways to implement a SaaS model of development services.

Brett made a thread about this here (https://twitter.com/BrettFromDJ/status/1506155528061218816?s=20&t=FGoW3bRvonN2-pGlwBukvA).

Based on the discussions that resulted I had the idea of focusing specifically on what would come after a customer has gotten their designs created. Using the component-based model of UI development, I think there is an opportunity to launch a SaaS based service where customers can submit unlimited designs, and the UI components/pages are built out in Storybooks + published to Chromatic for stakeholder review and discussion.

The general workflow would look something like the following:

  1. Onboard Customer (copy DesignJoy's flow)
  2. Set up GitHub Repo + Chromatic Project.
  3. Set up GitHub Action for Chromatic for auto-publishing.
  4. Set up Figma add-on for Chromatic/StorybookJS for linking components to their designs.
  5. Set up Trello board and/or GitHub board for managing requests.
  6. Develop, get feedback, iterate, repeat!

Chromatic's integration with Git providers and Figma + its collaboration and review features are what really drives the repeatable/scalable process. Because you are only developing UI code, there are "guardrails" so to speak that naturally constrain scoping. Of course, you could charge more for full-blown web-app development w/ a business logic and backends as an add-on.

Curious to hear other IndieHackers thoughts on this, and how one might market this type of productized SaaS service.

on April 1, 2022
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    I think the problem here is that the client would first have to redo their entire site/app to take advantage of this service. If they aren't using the components then they'll see no benefit. You might be better off having it so that you use a base set of components as an agency, then offer this as an upsell.