Design Ops & Pattern Libraries
What happens when you operationalize a global dev teams to maintain a consistent experience?
The Ask.
Create a responsive, site-wide integrated customer, store point-of-sale and customer care site (the first of it’s kind) and deliver phased design patterns including account, architecture and design consistency patterns.
The Challenge.
Integrating three verticals of customer website, in-store point-of-sale and customer care required significant and iterative design reviews with the client on a daily basis with various stakeholders. Delegation of roles and context of client feedback was critical in maintaining site consistency in interaction patterns. I identified early on the need for a site-wide architecture design that had until that point, been segmented by various product owners with non-transparent knowledge and fragmented decision making among requirements and agile teams.
Rebellion Framework
T-Mobile was not only looking to unify their employee tools with their customer, they needed to unify content management across their leadership, marketing, AOR agency and IT consulting teams.
The Approach.
1. Stakeholder Interviews
2. Research Analysis
3. Best Interaction Design Practices
4. Daily Client Stand-ups & Scrum meetings
5. Pattern Library framework and responsive design templates
6. Competitive Analysis
7. Axure/Interaction Design widget library standardization
8. Agile/Rapid Prototyping
9. Design/Interaction Pattern Reviews
10. Information Architecture Audit
11. Site Map and user flows
12. User Story Assessment
13. Pattern Library Client Reviews
14. Pattern Library/Design Audit with recommendations report
15. Finalize Architecture and Pattern Library Document
16. Socialize across business, UX and development teams
Daily “Wall Walks” of the experience
"Josh was very helpful in driving the “Rebellion” project forward. He joined initially to drive the account and landing pages forward, then identified and moved into IA and lead on finalizing an audit on patterns. The patterns were a key deliverable and contribution we needed to move forward with the client. He shared a very positive attitude and sought various ways to collaborate with larger UX teams."
— P. Baaske, Senior Director, Fjord
Sketching the Experience
-BRAD FROST, AUTHOR OF ATOMIC DESIGN
“Despite everyone's best intentions, all the time and effort that went into making a thoughtful design system and style guide can go straight down the drain...
A design system needs ongoing maintenance, support, and tender loving care for it to truly thrive.”
The Delivery.
Both a single unified site architecture and user flows as well as a +90 page design pattern library/guideline book for various agile product and development teams to use in parallel for design standards. Also delivered was a complete site-wide (50+ pages) inventory and design audit of design pattern mis-alignment and approved design exceptions for interaction, design and front-end development teams to resolve. This allowed the client to understand and make consistent decisions from the relationships in patterns with structural and atomic design principles. Finally, interaction designs were finalized for the customer account segment before I completed the project.
