We began our quest to create a new design system by determining the design direction that best matched our objective. This first stage was critical in establishing the tone and visual language of our product. We were committed to developing a design system that was consistent with our identity and connected with our target audience.
We performed extensive research, both internally and externally, before beginning this procedure. Internally, we solicited input from key stakeholders such as CEOs, product managers, and marketing teams to better grasp their product vision. We needed to make sure that the design system represented the organization’s overarching aims and objectives.
We conducted competition analysis and market research on the outside. To obtain a thorough grasp of consumer preferences and pain spots, we researched industry trends, assessed the user interfaces of successful products, and conducted user interviews and surveys. This research assisted us in identifying design patterns that connected with people and helped us distinguish ourselves from the competition.
With these ideas in hand, we set about defining our design principles. We wanted our design system to be simple, easy to use, and visually appealing. We emphasized the significance of simplicity, consistency, and accessibility in our design decisions, ensuring that they were based on these principles.
Understanding the coding language and technology used by the front-end team, as well as expanding on the current foundation, is one of the most important aspects of developing a new design system for a product already in the market.
We worked closely with the front-end team to obtain a thorough grasp of their coding language and technologies to enable the design system’s effective integration with the development process. This entailed maintaining open lines of communication and holding frequent meetings to match our design system goals with their technical requirements.
Understanding the coding language and technologies in use allowed us to utilize existing frameworks, libraries, and tools to speed up the design system’s implementation. This enabled us to leverage the front-end team’s knowledge while minimizing disturbances to their productivity.
In addition to comprehending the coding language, we considered the front-end team’s specialized procedures and processes. This allowed us to adjust the design system to their specific requirements and ensure a smooth adoption process. We aggressively solicited and implemented their comments in order to establish a design framework that worked easily with their existing development practices.
Furthermore, by matching our design system with the coding language and technology used by the front-end team, we promoted effective communication and information exchange between the design and development teams. Because the front-end team could easily use the design system’s components and styles in their development work, this synergy enabled a faster and more effective deployment of the design system.
The user interface (UI) is crucial in creating a product’s user experience (UX) in today’s digital world.
In this section, we go into the core concepts that led our product design team in building an outstanding user interface. The team ensured that the UI design was intuitive, aesthetically appealing, and fit with the product’s aims by identifying the target audience, performing user research, and implementing usability principles.
We prioritized the construction of a comprehensive token library as a first step in building our new design system.
To begin, we performed an in-depth study of the UI components and design assets we created while determining a design direction. This enabled us to discover frequent patterns and extract the key properties that might be converted into tokens. We organized these qualities into categories, resulting in a well-organized library of colors, typeface styles, spacing values, and other important design aspects.
The appropriate balance of flexibility and standardization was carefully considered. We wanted to give designers and developers a variety of possibilities within each token category while yet preserving a consistent overall style. The team was able to construct aesthetically appealing interfaces while conforming to the design system criteria thanks to this methodology.
We added inclusive design concepts to the token library to improve accessibility. This included taking into account elements like color contrast ratios, typographic readability, and supporting varied user preferences and demands. We wanted to establish an inclusive and user-friendly design system by prioritizing accessibility from the start.
To serve as a reference for the design and development teams, the token library was fully documented. To maintain uniformity in integrating the tokens across multiple applications and platforms, clear rules and usage instructions were supplied. This material was critical in onboarding new team members as well as encouraging collaboration and alignment within the organization.
We built a single language for designers and developers by establishing a strong token library as the cornerstone of our design system. It offered a scalable and effective way to design and develop UI components, promoting uniformity, eliminating rework, and speeding up the entire product development process.
Following the completion of our token library, we moved our emphasis to develop crucial UI components that form the cornerstone of every product. Buttons, input fields, selectors, and other elements are among them.
We used best practices and design patterns to produce intuitive and user-friendly UI components during the development process. To provide a consistent user experience across devices and platforms, we paid close attention to aspects such as interaction statuses, accessibility, and responsiveness.
Collaboration between the product design and development teams was critical in the creation of these UI components. We were able to tweak and improve the components based on user research and usability testing thanks to regular feedback loops and iterative design methods. This collaborative approach guaranteed that the components fit the demands of the users and were consistent with the overall product vision.
We focused on reusability and scalability while we created these UI components. Each component was created with modularity in mind, allowing for easy integration into other projects and adaptation to changing requirements. In the long term, this method saved time and effort since components could be reused across several products, minimizing job duplication.
We established the foundations for faster and more consistent product development by creating these core UI components. These components served as the foundation for the user interface, allowing the development team to use them and concentrate on higher-level functionality. The UI components of the design system guaranteed a consistent and aesthetically appealing user experience across our product ecosystem.
One of the most important factors to consider when developing an ongoing design system is the effective handoff of UI components in sprints, which helps to minimize bottlenecks throughout the development period.
We used an agile strategy to provide UI components in iterative sprints, recognizing the necessity of seamless communication between design and development. This enabled us to prioritize and deliver critical components on time, keeping the development process on track and reducing possible bottlenecks.
Sprint planning meetings were done on a regular basis to maintain alignment on goals, realistic schedules, and a shared knowledge of the components to be delivered.
Within each sprint, we focused on producing a subset of well-defined, well-designed, and development-ready UI components. This method allowed the development team to operate efficiently without being overwhelmed by a huge number of components at the same time.
We kept the design and development teams busy by breaking down the delivery of UI components into digestible sprints. This iterative methodology also allowed us to include user testing and real-world user feedback and changes, ensuring that the components were improved and optimized over time.
We used Supernova, a robust platform that supported seamless collaboration, documentation, and updates, to expedite our design system’s documentation and handoff process.
Supernova.io was critical in centralizing our design system and ensuring that the most recent version was always available to the whole team. We used its capabilities to build a comprehensive and interactive documentation center for our design system. This hub includes thorough rules, component specifications, use examples, and best practices, providing designers and developers with a single source of truth.
The platform’s collaborative capabilities enabled us to collaborate in real-time on documenting and upgrading the design system. Designers could easily contribute to the documentation by adding new components or making modifications, while developers could access the updated information and precisely implement the components.
Supernova.io also aided with the handoff between the design and development teams. It provided a streamlined procedure for exporting design assets and code snippets, making the move from design to development as painless as possible. This simplified handoff method eliminated miscommunications, and mistakes, and saved both teams important time.
Supernova also provided version control and change tracking capabilities, allowing us to track updates, assess changes, and keep a clear audit record of the design system’s progress. This allowed us to maintain the documentation up to date while also providing transparency on any changes made to the components.
Finally, you can view our Design system documentation here
