The Lighthouse Has Been Lit!

By GIC Published on March 31st, 2025

Last updated on March 31st, 2025

Calling all Developers and Designers to Help Us Test It!

An image showing the Delaware-shaped cartoon character Delly flipping a switch next to a Lighthouse, whose light has now been activated

We’ve got exciting news to share regarding the development of our new design system Lighthouse: The bulk of our website code and content design is now live and available for everyone through our new Storybook site! From the perspective of open-source development, this essentially means that, after many months of hard work by the dedicated GIC team, the Lighthouse has finally been lit!

One of the reasons for this blog is our commitment to the open-source approach to building Delaware’s official web identity. All the Lighthouse source code is freely available for anyone to use. Our hope is that this will eventually encourage collaboration with other creators who can help Lighthouse grow and evolve. More on how you can participate in just a minute!

The sharing of that code and website design begins with our Storybook site. It also provides a catalog of future options to consider for web editors and other agency staff who won’t need to handle development themselves.

According to its website, Storybook “is a frontend workshop for building UI components and pages in isolation. Thousands of teams use it for UI development, testing, and documentation.” And our team at the GIC is one of them! Storybook is laid out like a directory, with an alphabetical index on the left side with links that expand to reveal options within each category.

The categories include a Welcome section that features an introduction, a how-to guide and GIC contact information.

The Brand Guide gives tips on our new Common Look and Feel.

The Style Guide explains design element parameters and best practices.

The Components + UI Patterns section lists the individual building blocks of a Lighthouse web page.

The Page Templates offer ready-made templates for things like a homepage, a contact page, a staff directory page, etc.

Under each topic, you will find documentation, visual support, and the relevant code to cut, paste, and edit. The goals are simple: To explain the components/templates, to show what they look like, and to offer the code on an a la carte menu for development. (Not to worry, agencies that work directly with the GIC to adopt Lighthouse won’t have to do any coding!)

Other states using Storybook for their open source documentation include Georgia, with its Orchard design system, and Massachusetts, whose design system Mayflower is also on Storybook.

One great thing about this platform is that it provides a great way to update components and templates as changes are made. The Lighthouse Storybook is designed to grow and evolve along with Lighthouse itself.

The Lighthouse has been lit!

Live examples include the recently launched websites for Governor Meyer and Lt. Governor Gay.

Calling all Feedback Partners!

We’re looking for developers and Delaware agency web staffers who would like to help us improve Lighthouse!

Lighthouse is now fully available to explore, and we invite developers and agency web editors to dig their hands into the sand and begin to envision their own new Lighthouse websites. This effort is about building a community to provide criticism, suggestions, and enthusiasm for this project.