CREATING A SINGULAR DESIGN LANGUAGE FOR HR APPLICATIONS
Case Study - 2020
There was effort to redesign multiple Human Resources applications, which led to the opportunity to revise the design language that was used for all HR applications. Our focus was to reduce the design and development efforts and shorten the iteration time from idea to developed product.
Collaborative Partners
Branco Kuznar, Staff User Experience Designer
Tyler Lubbers, Staff Developer
WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
The company observed that there was a communication gap between the design of products and their development in the human resources space that led to longer turnaround times and additional time spent discussing design changes. How might we reduce the amount of time spent in design validation with our development partners so that we achieve a shorter lifecycle to get products to market, while reducing the development overhead to creating new features?
HERE'S THE STORY
During a gap in multiple teams’ efforts due to multi-week pilots at similar times, we were approached to revisit the design of our human resources applications. We initially facilitated a goals-building session with our leadership and established the guidelines for completion of this project. There was daily collaboration and rapid ideation of implementing a legible, usable, and viable style for over 50 components. Upon completion of the design, we presented our findings and a live demonstration of design-to-development of UI elements with multiple leadership partners.
OUR USERS
Developers
User Experience Designers
Development Managers
SCOPE & CONSTRAINTS
Affecting 34 designers & developers, across five products
Conducted during pilot periods of multiple products, limiting time exposure
Limited support, three team members created a recommendation and presented it to leadership
Development limited the viable design languages to three competing technologies: Flutter, Material, and our homegrown design language
OUTCOMES
Reduced time designing, by limiting the components used across multiple teams and products
Reduced development time, due to using simplified, out-of-the-box components to recreate the branded style
Increased speed-to-market across the area
Documentation of the design system in a shared repository for future use
Introduction of multiple component variants to support future-case scenarios
Allowed for direct development/design collaboration and conversation employing the needs of multiple teammates
ROLE & RESPONSIBILITIES
Strategy
Research Planning
Goals / Anti-Goals Faciliation
Research
Comparative Reviews of different design languages
Subject Matter Expert Interviews
Developer interviews
Design Component Review & Analysis
UI Design
High-Fidelity mockups
Live Design Reviews
Usability
Developer Feedback Sessions
Collaboration
Weekly Report Outs
Style Guide documented to internal shared space