Design Tools and their associated UI are an exciting development both in terms of the power and flexibility they will afford users, but also how they will replace chaos with consistency in the block editor UX.

I think the design does a really good job of tidying complex features / interfaces away until the user actually needs them. Not all blocks need padding, but it should be easy to add it as desired. The overall experience feels much less cluttered.

This got me thinking about one of the most complex block we have – the base Query Loop. Could we use this same design pattern to make an intuitive UI for query building? I couldn’t resist putting a quick prototype together…

The idea here is simple, when you insert a Query Loop it will display everything from a single post type (multiple post types doesn’t make much sense to me). You then add and combine filters using the familiar Design Tools UI until you’re satisfied with the output. I think this does a good job of avoiding the currently overwhelming experience when interacting with the vast multitude of options this block offers.

This pattern could not only be used to toggle filters on the Query block… maybe it’s also possible to toggle panels like Typography, Dimensions, and Border on all blocks.