Sveriges Radio (Radio Sweden)

Design system

The project

In the spring of 2017, we wanted to set up a design system to test that way of working. We had more people working with the same products and a system was needed to keept the experience aligned.

My role

I led the task force, which consisted of me, 2 other user experience designers and an art director. We brought in other skills in workshops and sprints. I planned the work, and facilitated workshops and meetings.

Competitive intelligence

We began the work by analysing design systems from other companies and interviewing an industry colleague who had done a similar project in a similar company. We looked at what we already had in the form of style guides and previous attempts to systematise our different UI's.

Current situation & problem

The biggest challenge was that this project wouldn't meet the same faith as previous attempts and end up in a drawer after a couple of months. We needed to start by understandning what our needs was. To get an idea of that, we held workshops with the product teams. The areas for improvement that emerged were:

Prioritization & problem solving

Either we could do something that was tailored to all plattforms or do something aimed more specifically at the iOS and android apps, where the need was greatest. I decided to target our efforts were the effects would be the greatest and went with doing a PoC of a design system for our app teams.

The three building blocks of the design system we developed:

1. Create reusable components.

2. Documentation & principles

We documented our components and began to establish principles for things like colours, time and date formats.

3. Routines & workflow

We introduced version management of the design files in Abstract. This created order and a place to see ongoing work for all teams. Everyone could also view sketches without needing specific licenses.

Validation

We held a sprint with the app teams where we displayed and explained the design system and tested the new way of working with a real case. Participants were generally positive and they wanted to have more things systematised liked this.

Results