Indeed Design System
As a member of the design system core team, my role was to address the product team's requests and create the requested patterns. I actively engaged with various cross-functional disciplines, including localization, accessibility, developers, product designers, and content experts. Indeed boasts a robust product team comprising approximately 500 UXers spread throughout the organization, who create tailored products for both employers and job seekers.
Role
UX Designer, UX Strategist
Project type
Design System for multi-devices
Team
7 Designers / 15 Devs
Contribution
Audit, research, design, and documentation
Tools
Figma, FigJam, Jira, Storybook
Duration
12 months
Context
At Indeed.com, I focus on creating and improving components based on feedback from our customers, and the product team. I also advocate for our audience's needs and align them with our business goals to deliver the best solutions.
To give you a better context of our organization, the key stakeholders of the design system encompass the following:
- End users, aka the audience: The audience interacts with our company, services, and products, such as Job Seekers.
- Product teams, aka the customers: The Indeedians designers and developers create consistent, holistic, and coherent user experiences based on the design system.
- Design system team, aka the specialists: A collaborative group of designers, content experts, researchers, and developers who create scalable, flexible, and accessible UI components. They establish principles and execute processes developed and maintain the design system.
This cyclical relationship between our audience, customers, and specialists is driven by the objective of delivering features that offer intuitive experiences for our audience. It emphasizes a collaborative approach where customer feedback informs the development of components to ensure the continuous improvement of user experiences.
Process
I have been involved in developing multiple components to fulfill the requests of the product team. This process involves over 15 people from various disciplines, and we ensure top-notch quality at every step of the way. When we receive a component request, whether it's a simple icon or a complex table, it goes through the following process:
Impact
I have created over 30 components for products and emails, ensuring accessibility compliance, right-to-left (RTL) support, and translation capabilities. These components are designed for flexibility and are used by multiple product teams, addressing various challenges along the way. Their creation and enhancement have significantly improved our product offerings, providing more features and a better user experience. This has led to increased customer engagement and higher profitability for the company.
Key results
I measure the impact of my work using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative measurement is based on the adoption of my designs, and I retrieve this information from Figma analytics. On the other hand, the qualitative measurement is captured through feedback received from customers and fellow coworkers.
30+
32+
245+
23.5k
Icons and patterns created
Teams using the IDS
Figma files using IDS
Instances created
Next steps
We have several initiatives in the team to continually improve the design system, optimize processes, and simplify the components. Some of the most important ones are:
- Creation of internal processes to provide training materials for the design system team members.
- Expansion of the design system to integrate with internal tools that work with React.
- Simplification of the contribution process to enable our customers to build their own components by following the design system guidelines and self-serving their requests.
Takeaways
My journey at Indeed.com has developed my professional career exponentially. The opportunity to work with experts from other disciplines has refined my work quality and increased my expertise tremendously. These are my top takeaways from my experience:
- Consistency vs. flexibility: A hot topic! I’ve learned that flexibility should take priority because we want customers who want to use the design system.
- Accessibility is key: This extra layer is beneficial not only for those with disabilities but for everyone and should be considered when designing a component.
- Design Systems are endless: A design system is a product that helps designers and developers create products faster and more efficiently. As a product, it has cyclical improvements that expand and correspond to the organization's expansion as well.
- Simplicity: This is always a good starting point: Putting so much complexity in the first version of a component is not a good strategy, especially if it’s a new introduction for the customers. The best strategy is to implement priority features and add patches as the customers require.
- I am a work in progress: Despite trying to keep up with the latest updates in the industry, there are always new tools, new functionalities, and new methods to speed up my workflow. I am always open to learning and sharing my knowledge.
Peers' feedback
"Diana is not just an asset to our team but an extraordinary design professional whose contributions make us all better at what we do."
Valeria Molina, Sr. UX Designer, Partner
"Diana was a great partner in establishing a streamlined content creation process for component documentation. The newly-created, dedicated Google Drive for documentation and image asset creation has significantly improved the efficiency of our documentation processes."
Jenny Park, UX Content Designer, Partner
"Diana has been my Design System partner as I work on a new email job card to add to the Email Design Library. She has been very helpful in understanding the process for adding a new component to the design system."
Debra Gladwin, Sr. UX Designer, Customer
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