Sekure Design System: Streamlining Design and Development
Summary
As a centralized repository of reusable components, the Sekure Design System played a crucial role in enhancing efficiency and maintaining brand consistency across various marketing and product assets. Built in Figma, the system streamlined the design and development process, leading to a 150% reduction in production time.
By fostering alignment between designers and developers, the Sekure Design System contributed to a more cohesive and efficient workflow.
As the owner of the Design System, I spearheaded the creation and implementation of the system's strategy.
Ensuring it effectively addressed the needs of both designers and developers, I maintained and expanded the system by continuously adding new components to support the evolving needs of our user interfaces. My leadership in this project contributed significantly to streamlining workflows and maintaining brand consistency across Sekure's marketing and product assets.
The challenge
To develop a comprehensive design system that could accommodate the diverse range of assets used by our creative and development teams, from website design to internal banners.
To address this challenge, the design system focused on the following key areas:
Brand Consistency: Ensuring a unified visual language across all assets.
Developer Handoff: Streamlining the process of transferring designs to developers for implementation.
Scalability: Creating a flexible system that could adapt to future design needs.
Ease of Use: Designing the system to be intuitive and user-friendly for production designers.
By addressing these key areas, the Sekure Design System successfully streamlined workflows, improved efficiency, and ensured a consistent brand experience across all marketing and product assets.
Key benefits
Centralized Asset Repository: The design system serves as a single source of truth for all design assets, ensuring consistency and efficiency.
Scalable Updates: Changes to existing designs can be implemented at scale, saving time and effort.
Focus on Strategic Design: Designers can devote more time to addressing complex design challenges and developing innovative solutions rather than focusing on minor visual adjustments.
Efficient Design Creation: Pre-made components enable designers to quickly create and build new designs, accelerating the development process.
Streamlined Collaboration: The design system facilitates easy and clear handoff between designers and developers, improving collaboration and reducing misunderstandings.
Development Approach
To get started, I conducted a full site and asset audit for Sekure. I wanted to know what type of assets are being created and where the opportunities are to add them into the design system.
Through this exploration, I created a style guide as the foundation for the system. Along with this, I created a structure and naming convention to organize all components which allowed all users to easily find what they needed.
Component Structure and Flexibility
To accommodate the diverse range of assets used at Sekure, the design system incorporated a flexible component structure. By creating variants of individual components, I enabled designers to easily adapt them to various project requirements. This approach not only streamlined the design process but also ensured consistency and clarity by defining specific parameters for customization and usage.
Templates for Efficient Asset Creation
To streamline the design and development process for our small but agile team, I created templates that leveraged pre-made components. These templates allowed designers and developers to focus on editing images and copy while maintaining consistent layout and branding.
By incorporating features like auto-layout and variants, I empowered even non-Figma experts (stakeholders) to easily update text and copy for landing pages. This approach significantly improved efficiency and ensured adherence to brand standards.
Documentation
To ensure effective utilization of the design system, I developed documentation for specific high usage components. This documentation included:
Clear Explanations: A detailed description of the component's purpose and typical usage, often accompanied by best practices and guidelines.
Visual Examples: Images and usage examples to illustrate the component's application in different contexts.
Usage Guidelines: Clear rules outlining when and where to use each component to maintain consistency and avoid misuse.
This thorough documentation empowered designers and developers to understand and effectively utilize the design system, contributing to its overall success.
Learnings and Future Directions
This was a little bit unconventional on how I would typically create a design system. There are a few things that I would have like to add. But, due to time constraints and available resources, I had to pivot and really look at the big picture. Though some steps like full tokenization and extensive proper documentation was skipped for now, I had to make sure that this was still recognized when building components. It needed to be something that I can easily update and improve on. This is really where I had to think systematically, stay organized and have a deep understanding on how designers and developers will be using the system.
However, I was able to deliver a design system that has yielded significant benefits. Production time has been significantly reduced, inconsistencies have been minimized, and developer handoff has become more efficient and well-defined.