Modernizing Enterprise with Design Systems
ServiceNow
Design System
UI Design
Project Role
Design Lead
Timeline
Feb '19 - April '21 (2.5 yrs)
Partners
10+ Designers,
4+ Product Managers,
15+ Developers
The Now Design System enables enterprises to craft cohesive, consumer-grade experiences faster. On this team, I created core components, supported partner team's, and led the execution of a new visual style across the ecosystem.
DISCOVER
Users: Design System Consumers
As a design system team, we're supporting not just the end user but the entire organization—PMs, developers, and designers—who aim to create useful and usable products. With that in mind, I identified these key user needs for the design system consumers:
Create solid experiences with robust components that suit their use cases
Understand component usage so that they can build consistently across the ecosystem
Build innovative solutions with components that evolve with their product needs
DEFINE
Product Design x Systems Thinking
Design systems are built to scale, enforce standards, and empower users but the traditional design thinking process doesn't fully address the unique challenges of systems design. With that, I adapted these methods to focus on scalability and balance users need, system requirements, and technical constraints.
EXECUTION
Building Components
I was responsible for enhancing and building key components in the Now Design System. This involved collaborating with PMs to gather use cases and define requirements, creating specifications to guide developers on behavior and interactions, and providing guidelines to educate others on component usage.
Specs outlining architecture, behavior, accessibility, and configurations for developers to build components.
Detailing functionality, intended use, and behavior to help teams use the design system effectively. View guidelines here.
Supporting Partner Teams
I collaborated with designers on partner teams to help them build out their products. These teams are responsible for the foundational framework of product features. I worked alongside these designers to provide insights on design system patterns and unify the visual design language for net-new experiences.
Scaling New Visual Design Language
I lead a team of four designers in executing a new visual design language for the entire product ecosystem. We systematically applied the proposed styles to the existing components and framework. In this process, we were able to identify risks in the proposal, the impacts to the system, and the changes required on the development team to reflect the new visuals throughout the product ecosystem.
Ensured were applied with guiding principles so that the existing component relations were clear.
Stress tested with customer themes to ensure visual changes won't disrupt existing application.
Streamlined communication between engineering and design to ensure visibility of changes and address technical issues early.
REFLECTION
Lessons Learned
All hands in
Executing a design system requires a company-wide effort, where advocacy, guidelines, and resources are crucial for successful adoption.
Room to grow
I gained a deeper understanding of the pain points and opportunities, and how essential it is to have processes in place that continuously improve both the system and our partnerships with designers.
Pick your battles
I learned to prioritize my efforts and focus on the most impactful solutions for our users. While we couldn't always create components exactly as needed, we made sure to address those needs in future roadmaps to enable long-term success.