Design System Support Team
The objective of this project was to support in consolidating the Company design principles in a series of Libraries in order to be distributed and used for all design activities of new products and applications both internally and by other consultancy agencies.
Duration: 14 Months
Role: UX/UI Designer, working directly with the Design Manager and Design System Owner
Tools Used: Figma, Adobe Illustrator
Due to Non-Disclosure Agreements I will not be able to showcase any visuals regarding these activities.
When working on this project, the main objectives to guide activities were the following:
-
Consistency Across Products: Ensures uniform design elements, creating a cohesive brand experience across all platforms and products.
-
Improved Efficiency: Speeds up the design and development process by providing reusable components, reducing repetitive work.
-
Enhanced Collaboration: Bridges the gap between design and development teams, offering a shared language and reference for workflows.
-
Scalability: Makes it easier to scale designs across multiple projects or teams without compromising on quality or brand identity.
-
Cost-Effectiveness: Reduces maintenance and redesign costs by streamlining updates and revisions.
-
Better User Experience (UX): Provides a familiar and intuitive interface for users, improving usability and satisfaction
1 // Change Requests
One of the primary activities was to manage the incoming change requests (from Designers, Developers) which would either require a new component, existing component updates or request additional information/documentation regarding components or patterns.
2 // Design New Components
When a use case emerged which required ad-hoc component design, the first step was collecting the specific requirements for the component. It is important to note that these components, called core components, need to be usable for a large variety of products and contexts, so it is necessary to raise the point of view starting from the specific change request, in order to understand if additional requirements can be defined and integrated.
​Once completed a proposal is validated (or not) by the Design System Owner, and the updates to the Library are published and deployed to all the Product Libraries and Design Files.
3 // Documentation
When designed new components, or updating existing ones, it is important to provide detailed documentation aimed at both designers and developers to guide them in the correct use of the component or pattern. Documentation consists generally on a description, anatomy breakdown, variants description, do's & dont's, examples and a complete table of variants. Specific sections on how to use it as part of a specific ux-pattern or contexts were sometimes added.
4 // Design System Maintenance
A continuous process is that of Design System Maintenance, as small updates to color-style, text-styles, ux-patterns can represent, if not regularly updated, a cumbersome design debt.
5 // Icon Library and New Icon Design
An additional activity was that of supporting the Engineering Team by designing new icons for the current generation of HMI’s deployed on the market, in addition to the Icons requested by the Designers working on the next generation of HMI's.
​
This activity was often divided into 3 steps:
1 - Collect information from the request to understand which icon is needed, verify if no alternative icon is already available in the libraries
2 - Either select an icon from a library (MUI) or if a custom icon is required design it
3 - Publish the icon library with the newly included icons
​