Excited, stylish woman making a silly face with halftone texture overlay

TWITTER

Design Systems

I owned and operated Twitters largest marketing web design system, used by over 37 partners on internal and external desktop and mobile websites. I also built two main products leveraging this system with cross functional teams including engineering, operations, business stakeholders and program managers.

Goals

  • Maintain the system in Figma and beyond

  • Educate teams on design best practices & systems

  • Capture feedback to inform smarter decisions

  • Create and police the center of truth

  • Constantly test, check and collaborate

  • Be the dedicated go-to consultant

  • Create inclusive design guidance and onboarding

My role

  • Organize Figma for faster viewing

  • Led training sessions for internal/external agencies

  • Update components based on user + accessibility feedback with mobile focus

  • Create more definitive processes and expectations

  • Take ownership of the system and communicate more holistically with teams

  • Created online style guide that lived outside of Figma

RELATIONSHIP RESULTS

“That was the best training we’ve ever had. You’ve managed to simplify a complex topic into clear and usable nuggets.”

– Agency partner, Account manager

Twitter marketing online style guide

WORKFLOW IMPROVEMENTS

EMPOWERING TEAMS

applying a design system

it’s an iterative process

I built and designed the “Learning Hub”, Twitters internal training system for educational and global communications. Using our design system, partnering with business executives and another designer, we were able to incrementally improve components based on survey results and accessibility audits. Internal tools are rarely glamorous but with a developed design system, collaboration and a solid understanding of technical limitations you can achieve a lot with a little!

Organizing tooling, ideas and documentation

Where the rubber meets the road

Webpage design with bright colors and clean layout for Learning at Twitter
Webpage design with bright colors and clean layout for onboarding new employees

  • UNDERSTANDING

    After receiving feedback from partner surveys, it was clear that people were confused. They didn’t understand what was the central source of truth, where to start and how to utilize our files and available resources. There were many resources in separate places.

    No one told me what to do. All I had were the challenges - what’s working, what’s not. I was selected to initiate a full refresh of our system, both at a component and governance level because I demonstrated resourcefulness and felt comfortable working independently. I made technical updates and created new processes and user flows for how the system was used and explained.

    DEFINE, STRATEGIZE, PRIORITIZE

    Now that we understand the challenges, we can formulate goals that address the pain points.

    • Be a center of truth

    • Create easier ways to navigate

    • Define a process for onboarding & off-boarding

    IDEATE

    Now that we have goals, we can strategize tasks that support these goals.

    • Consolidate asset and media specs outlined in Confluence, JIRA, google drive and other Figma files leftover from external agencies

    • Include an index page for components in Figma

    • Include a glossary page to define all the different systems and where to find them

    • Create an entry point for non-Figma users (revamp existing online style guide)

    • Offer weekly office hours and scheduling options for personalize sessions

    EXPERIMENT

    Prototype, design, iterate

    BUILD IT

    Once the solutions were implemented and carried out, several iterations later, communications had to go about the new changes.

    • Announcements via slack channel

    • Add to agenda in office hours (discuss changes in person briefly)

    • Add announcement to monthly department email

    • Include notes via ‘publish’ in Figma

  • Very closely with engineering, learning and development teams, internal partners, external agencies, operations managers, program managers, brand designers, product managers, product designers, human resources.

  • I enjoy educating people and teams about anything creative. Training designers and especially non-designers about the importance of design thinking, systems and good design sensibility is rewarding to me. Learning from others is also a source of insight and perspective that I cherish.

    I also loved that I could take ownership of topics I was interested in, creating initiatives and working independently to get things done.