Thoropass had recently secured a round Series C investment, so it was time to step up to the big leagues and start to take things a little more serious. Their first investment was getting a new re-useable design system created, documented, and implemented in order to speed up feature releases and create consistency across their ecosystems.

Thoropass had a makeshift design system for its previous branding (Laika) in place when I joined, but glaring issues arose when I was tasked with building, implementing, and evangelizing a brand new system. Issues Identified

The Figma library was disorganized and did not have clear instructions of usage

The engineering component library was not connected in any way and was disorganized as well; all teams we’re simply copy/paste for code snippets for elements

WCAG ADA Compliance failures all across the web app

No design and engineering collaboration

Slow development sprints due to every UI being custom made

Huge amount of technical debt

Through interviews with the design and engineering teams, several gaps were identified for the design systems and the development process. Key Findings

No lead designer guiding the vision of the interface components

Lack of a design critique to ensure new UI components and standards are upheld

No governance process for new elements

Failure to acknowledge and execute design standards aimed at ADA Compliance

Lacking creative vision for the design system and brand representation in Thoropass (Laika)

The engineering component library was not connected in any way and was disorganized as well; all teams we’re simply copy/paste for code snippets for elements

Thoropass had a makeshift design system for its previous branding (Laika) in place when I joined, but glaring issues arose when I was tasked with building, implementing, and evangelizing a brand new system. Opportunities

Create a dedicated team to have ownership of the standards, quality, and execution

Increase collaboration between new team’s design and engineering, as well as the other product teams with one another

Compare and purchase tools required to build a new design system: Figma & Storybook

Clearly define components and their usage

Reduce tech debt

Speed up time to launch for the product teams

When the choice was made to invest in a design system, a team was created to facilitate the defining, designing, building, and implementation of the system itself. This was the way we built components for year one. Teams would request a new component or a variant of an existing component, our team would design and build the component, and then it would be released to the wild for the feature teams to use.

This worked at first while the number of teams being supported was smaller (3), but with the continued growth of Thoropass, the number of teams increased (7). This led us to rethink the contribution method of the program.

In year two, the changes we implemented were the creation of a design system council that would have representation from each feature team. They would be responsible for reviewing ideas and built UIs for inclusion into the core design system. This allowed the feature teams to build and not wait around for components to be built be a singular team.

Getting top-down buy-in from the executive team

Creating a dedicated team for the design system

Creating an “in-person” culture to the team communication in a fully distributed setting

Utilizing UI code kits to speed up development

Bringing engineering into the component refinement and design critique sessions

Developing process for new components

Investing the time to ensure ADA Compliance What didn’t work

Moving too quickly, small items can get lost in the vast amount of detail being documented

Too many teams to support led to feature teams waiting