DHARMA Studio and Marketplace

DHARMA is a startup travel company that offers passion and community-based trips and experiences. They wanted me to create a design system for their new digital product, the DHARMA Studio, as well as take the lead in designing the UX/UI of this new platform. I also ended up redesigning their existing digital marketplace, to create a cohesive suite of digital products.

Create a coherent and user-friendly design system based on DHARMA’s existing branding

Make it simple yet scalable

Keep it well organized to facilitate collaboration with other designers and engineers

With an existing digital product, some pre-existing design system elements had to be updated to create a more well-rounded, easily scalable system

While the existing platform was more of a marketing product, the new Studio was to be a highly interactive, user-centric product that required next-level readability and usability

Typography, color palettes, and spacing were carefully updated and expanded to keep the brand look cohesive

A shared UI Library file system was set up in Figma, that allows one source of truth for styles and shared components across all current and future products

Create all the UI elements to bring product requirements and wireframes to life

Communicate with the rest of the team to iterate on the designs, and make sure business requirements were met

Ensure final designs were precise and dev-ready

At the start, lots of designs were needed as the engineering team had been working on the project for some time already

In a fast-paced startup environment, things change quickly and product roadmaps evolve on a daily basis

The product went through major shifts during the design and development phase

The first designs were produced rapidly to help get started with development without delay

An open line of communication with the client was maintained at all times, and flexibility was built into the collaboration to account for the hard-to-predict nature of the product environment

Workflows and filing systems were put in place to account for the minor and major changes in the product’s direction

Conduct a visual refresh of the existing marketplace to account for the expansion of the client’s offerings

Work with the creative director to make sure the brand’s visual integrity was being preserved

Create a new booking funnel interface

The marketplace showcases a very wide array of products and third party brands, making consistency and brand recognition a delicate balancing act

The incremental redesign approach adopted by the client made it difficult to maintain a clear overarching vision

A rapidly-changing environment made keeping track of design decisions and iterations challenging

A tight collaboration with the creative director allowed for both the client’s brand and their offerings to coexist in harmony on the marketplace

An atomic approach to the design of UI elements and interfaces meant that a good amount of cohesion was able to persist throughout different changes of directions

File annotations, file history/versioning, and close collaboration with the product manager were key to ensure continuity in-between redesign phases