Purina's ever-growing suite of digital products required a design system that could ensure a consistent look and feel, making it easier for users to recognize and use the products. I created and led a team of designers to achieve that mission for stakeholders that ranged across all of Purina's digital business leaders. Having a design system in place made it easier for designers and developers to collaborate, as there was now a shared language and set of standards to work from.
With look, tone and feel directions from the brand team, the first step we tackled was creating tokens for style properties.
Design tokens were used to provide a consistent, efficient, and scalable way of defining and using design elements within the design system, improving collaboration and ensuring accessibility for all users.
They ensured that designers and developers could quickly and easily access and implement these elements in their work, rather than having to manually adjust the values each time they are used. This saved time and reduced the risk of design inconsistencies.
Every product within Purina's digital ecosystem was audited to create a list of components that were often used and then categorized as either a global component that lives within the design system or a local component that is created within the local library of that product.
Components were thoroughly detailed to provide a consistent, reusable, and efficient way of designing and building user interfaces, improving collaboration, scalability, accessibility, and maintainability.
By using components, designers and developers were able to work more efficiently, as they could leverage established, tested, and well-designed elements, rather than having to start from scratch for each new product.
Being such a large company with multiple brands that have their own products, it was critical to create a workflow of development and implementation of the design system within the brands and product teams.
Starting with establishing a cross-functional team of designers, developers, product mangers, and stakeholders from different departments and brands, we set out to ensure that all perspectives are taken into account and that everyone worked towards a common goal.
The roadmap to achieve this goal required a comprehensive design audit, clear principles, a shared vocabulary, documented design components, implementation and testing, iteration and refinement, and ongoing training and support.
