Launching a New Design System
Startup • Responsive Web • UX/UI Design
Overview
Most designers and engineers know firsthand how much time a good design system can save while ensuring consistency within a product. As the lead product designer for all web-based product areas at Stride, I aimed to create a design system to manage all eight product areas for which I was responsible. My challenge was to build a quality MVP design system to demonstrate value to leadership.
Key Outcomes
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Launched the first company-wide design system
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Expedited company rebrand from 3 months to 2 weeks
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Expanded design system with more components and across more products
My Roles
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UI Design
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Project Management
My Team
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Eric Henke, Engineer
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Will Roberts, Engineer
About the Company
Stride helps 1099 workers navigate the complexities of being independent, providing software tools for finding the right health, dental, and vision insurance plans, for tracking finances, and planning for taxes.
Challenges & Opportunities
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As the sole web designer, it wasn't easy to maintain quality while managing design for eight product areas with multiple engineering teams.
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A design system was not a company priority.
Pictured above: Web-based product areas I managed
Key Decisions
Finding design partners
I had built great relationship with several engineers in Stride, two of which were also very passionate about building a design system. Together, we agreed on an approach to build an MVP.
Determining scope
Our main goal was to demonstrate value quickly to leadership. We decided to focus on foundational components like color and fonts first.
Second priority was to implement common components we used in key product flows: text inputs, buttons, and controls.
Next Steps
After positive validation of Stride's new design system, we received buy-in from leadership to continue onto phase 2, which included building more complex components into component library and expanding it to more product areas.
Outcomes
Figma UI Kit
A comprehensive UI kit, complete with variants and prototypes
Component Repository with Storybook Preview
A companion component library with theming and preview functionality
2 weeks vs 3 months Implementation
The MVP design system's release coincided with a company-wide rebrand. Everything leveraging the design system was updated in a single sprint, whereas manually updating other product areas took three months.
Next up: My Resume>
