My Role

• UI and Interaction Design: Led the design of user interfaces for the flagship brand and 40+ secondary properties.
• Design System Creation: Developed a custom design system and pattern library tailored to content and user needs.
• Accessibility Coaching: Provided training and coaching for the internal teams on how to integrate accessibility throughout the design and development process.
• Collaboration: Worked closely with stakeholders, developers, and engineers to implement incremental and global changes while evaluating their impact.

The Process
1. Research and Evaluation

• Design Maturity Assessment: I began by evaluating the organization's design maturity, identifying gaps in their current processes, and understanding the goals of both users and the business.
• Requirements Gathering: Worked with key stakeholders to align business goals with user-centered design practices, balancing the content-first strategy with the need for improved user experience.
  
  

2. Design System Development

• Custom Design System: Created a unified design system that catered to both content and user needs. This included a pattern library with reusable components and detailed documentation for consistency across all properties.
• Best Practices Playbook: Developed a comprehensive playbook outlining best practices, instructions, and guidelines for the internal teams, ensuring a consistent design language across the organization.
• Scalability: The design system was built to scale across the 40+ digital properties, providing flexibility to meet the needs of various stakeholders while maintaining a unified experience.
  
  

3. Accessibility and UX Improvements

• Accessibility Integration: Embedded accessibility best practices into the design system, making it a core part of the design process. This included:
• Color contrast optimization.
• Clear typography and readable font sizes.
• Screen reader compatibility.
• Accessible forms and interactive components.
• Coaching and Training: I led workshops and training sessions for designers and developers, ensuring that accessibility guidelines were understood and implemented effectively.
  
  

4. Collaboration and Iteration

• Stakeholder Collaboration: Worked closely with stakeholders to ensure alignment between design improvements and business objectives. I evaluated the ROI on global design changes versus more isolated, incremental improvements to optimize resource use.
• Developer Communication: Established open communication channels between designers and developers, creating a smoother workflow and more efficient implementation of the design system.
• CMS Flexibility: Defined requirements for the organization’s CMS (Tridion SDL) to support flexibility in design, ensuring the system could adapt to future growth and design changes.
  

Outcome and Impact

Results:

• Design Consistency: Implemented a custom design system that resulted in a consistent user experience across all 40+ properties.
• Accessibility Compliance: Improved accessibility compliance across all digital products, making the organization's platforms more inclusive and user-friendly.
• Process Improvement: Established new internal processes for design and development collaboration, closing communication gaps and streamlining workflows.
• Increased Design Maturity: Elevated the design maturity of the organization by implementing systematic UX processes, design standards, and accessibility best practices.

Metrics:

• Increased Design Efficiency: Reduced design and development time for new pages by 30% due to the reusable components in the design system.
• Improved Accessibility: Achieved a 25% increase in accessibility compliance based on post-launch audits.
• Higher User Satisfaction: Feedback from user testing indicated an improvement in user experience, with users reporting a 20% increase in satisfaction with the site's usability and design.

What I Learned

This role underscored the importance of building flexible, scalable design systems and fostering open collaboration between teams. It also reinforced my belief in the power of communication as a key pillar of good UX design, not just a nice-to-have.

If I were to approach this again, I would prioritize earlier involvement of end-users in the research phase to gather more feedback, helping to shape the design system from the ground up.

Final Thoughts

Through this experience, I demonstrated the ability to elevate an organization’s design maturity and accessibility standards, while managing a complex ecosystem of digital properties. The custom design system I created continues to drive consistency, accessibility, and efficiency, while aligning with the organization’s content-first approach.