DESIGN SYSTEM CLEAN-UP
The Degreed Design System (Fresco) was very messy with many components and pieces being broken, not findable or usable, missing, or used incorrectly. One of my first tasks on the design team was to conduct an audit of the design system and its current pain points and identify areas for improvement. This expanded into designing and implementing most of the improvements suggested, including a new operational process for tracking and logging design system issues and update needs. I am currently continuing to work on the new Degreed design system (Apollo) to streamline component efficiency by creating more intuitive variants and component structure.
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Company: Degreed
Role: Product Designer
Contributions: Lead research, analysis, ideation, designs, iterations, and rollout
Tools Used: Confluence, Jira, Figma
Research & Analysis
Research was conducted internally on the product design team to validate the biggest pain points of current design system users and gauge interest in more robust processes for tracking and logging design system issues. Clear themes came out of research and further informal discussions with team members regarding missing components, outdated or mis-used components, and components being difficult to find or use, causing inefficiencies and frustration.
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I also reviewed and updated spec files in Figma to better catalog and log known issues with both the design system and production components which quickly led to developing a tracking system to log issues for further work.
Early internal tracking spreadsheet example before all issues were logged in Jira
Ideation & Design
Based on prioritized need, I created a new Jira board to log and track outstanding issues needing design review including production issues and design system issues or gaps. Using this tracking method, I begin picking up tickets and fixing 95% of all logged design system gaps and issues within my first several months on the team in priority order. This was a great way to dive into the complexities of design systems, become a more efficient Figma user, and identify better and more efficient ways to build components in the future.
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Issues addressed included building new components that were missing, making some components more efficient with better use of variants, fixing broken components, ensuring all components matched production components, and deprecating outdated components no longer in use.
Jira tracking sample with 95% of logged issues and work resolved
Iteration & Outcome
I communicated to my peers on the design team with significant changes to update on progress regularly throughout this process, and gave education on identifying and logging known issues moving forward. This project brought a new level of transparency to the team along with a better awareness of how to utilize our current design system more efficiently.
Confluence page detailing how, why, and when to log design issues utilizing Jira for team education