Project Purpose
When I was brought to UW there was no design system in place. Different departments and products had been using different UI libraries and components which varied a lot. We wanted to bring everything under one roof (umbrella) in order to make the design process more structural and consistent across the board. The need for the design of a single source of truth was inevitable. The main challenge was to get designers and developers on the same page, making sure the approach and the system itself is future proof.
The Approach
We knew we wanted to build something that would be easy to expand, maintain and will adapt to changes driven by technology and business demands.
Establish multidisciplinary team
Interface audit
Set the rules and principles of the design system
Use a pilot project to battle-test the system
Run a sprint retrospective
Create further design patterns and expand the system
The first step was to conduct an interface audit. We have gathered representatives from different work streams and ask them to screenshot and categorise all the unique ui patterns that can be found in our existing design system. Once this part was completed all the screenshots were combined into one document and presented to the team. It was the foundation and a point of reference for any further work.
We have approached the design based on the atomic system methodology. We started small by choosing a pilot project to make sure the design system we've been creating has been done with the context of the real product in mind.
Interface audit results
Final results
Our design system is still growing, however it has already proven its value in creating better and consistent, scalable products for our customers and partners. In order to keep everyone on the same page we hold regular syncs across the product teams.
