Design system ・ Process improvement
Company
Agoda
Timeline
July 2020 - July 2021
At Agoda, there was only a component 'sticker' sheet for mobile app designs. And there were no authority and process for the design system team to maintain libraries efficiently and collaborate with other designers.
Moreover, App and Web libraries are maintained by different designers with different standards.
Under this tragic situation, I was volunteering to be a library contributor outside of my role. In the end, I was the one of passionated the design system team members from July 2020 to July 2021.
My part is to bridge App and Web libraries maintainers and evangelize the designers to adopt the design system.
Before starting all of the projects, the design system team members, including the other three designers and me, sat down and defined the design system principles. All the tasks for the design system streamline with the principles: Easy, Open Unified.
The previous UI library was just a short list of components stickers. Using a library component wasn't considered a part of the required workflow in Agoda design team, and designers had used them only when they want to use them!
There was no proper structure for the libraries, and everyone called specific components with different naming conventions. We needed to have solid UI libraries before asking designers to use them.
We researched the ideal solution for the naming convention and library structure. I also went through what's available at Agoda and how other companies do and suggested the direction for the consistent naming system. In the end, it was the starting point for us to move forward to the 'unified design system.'
Finally, we created a robust and consistent UI libraries consisted of Desing language and Component Kit for App, Web, and Mobile Web design.
Documenting component guidelines require tremendous work. We needed to review how the components being used on the production, define the ideal usage and best practice for Agoda users and keep a clear formatting and writing tone that everyone understands
However, defining a new visual guideline requires to be aligned with every designer. I ran a couple of quick poll sessions with the entire design team to determine what the Agoda design would look like.
For library maintenance work, the design system team needed better request work management. I adopted the request categorizing methods to Agoda design and utilized Figma as request communication tool. By introducing the request flow and tool, we are able to easily encourage the design team to contribute to the design system.
After the request tickets are filed, the design system team should review them if it feats our design system or finds a better solution. I realized the requests came as ad-hoc, and our discussion often fell into a rabbit hole. So I suggested and have led a weekly review session and developed the request review framework based on the design system principle.
