Pega Cosmos design system and UX architecture

Pega currently offers the following design systems: 

• The Constellation design system (available in Pega Platform™ version 8.8, previously referred to as Cosmos React in version 8.7) — this is the latest Pega design system, built on Pega’s Constellation architecture.
• Theme Cosmos (available in Pega 8.7 and prior) — this design system is built on Pega’s traditional section-based UI architecture.

Each is different in how it is authored and in level of prescriptiveness.

The Constellation design system is built on Pega’s new, view-based architecture:

• Emphasizes configuration over customization of the UI— enables you to configure business logic instead of building UI from scratch
• Provides prescribed workflows for users and guided authoring for low-code developers— allows you to build applications fast with pre-made UI designed for productive user experiences
• Allows you to configure views, instead of sections— enables you to configure business logic and then add a presentation layer to the data, instead of adding logic to pieces of UI

Theme Cosmos is built on Pega’s traditional, section-based UI architecture:

• Allows you to customize skins, sections, and harnesses
• Available for Pega Platform 8.7 and earlier
• Provides prescribed workflows for users
• Authored in a mix of App Studio and Dev Studio
• Emphasizes customization over configuration— allows you to customize UI, but can lead to inconsistent UX and challenges with upgrades

In Pega Platform™ ’23, applications that use traditional UI architecture with Theme Cosmos or UI Kit can import Constellation cases from existing Constellation applications. 

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