Design System - UX
Template System
I created and deployed a design system to streamline productivity across the nation through optimizing our design documents.
Company
WSP
Dates
Nov 2021 - Jul 2022
Tools
Indesign - Photoshop - Asana
I created and deployed a design system to streamline productivity across the nation through optimizing our design documents.
As a large firm producing hundreds of documents, most of which are under a month in production, WSP needed a change to their existing proposal template structure. I was approached by the Strategic Growth team to:
Re-design existing templates for the marketing team
Create multiple aesthetic options that can be scaled
The original templates were made by a designer for a designer and marketing managers and coordinators spent countless hours trying to design aesthetically pleasing, innovate materials for submissions to clients. However, due to a lack of in-depth design theory and old templates that were rife with errors the pinch of time and budget collided consistently, forcing our marketing team to all be graphic designers.
Through 12 unique interviews with marketing leaders, I was able to identify 3 major pain points:
1. Templates are not diverse enough
2. Templates are not user-friendly for non-designers
3. Templates did not provide a pre-designed example.
I started by ideating 3 basic scenarios each project would go through: initiation, content gathering and submission. I gathered boilerplate content and created a template that contained 80% of what the team's standard proposals contained.
The first design was an exclusively branded template per the original request. I started with identifying a new, modern take to the branding. This approach was well received, but after testing, the level of user needed was too high. In fact, I realized I had made an error most designers make which was to over design. The result was great for small documentation, but anything over 15 pages became difficult. After more testing, I realized the average document was actually closer to 35 pages.
After meeting with additional users and leaders, I was able to pivot from the original deliverable with a more robust product. The new intent with the templates was to create a wholistic ecosystem that not only held templates, but supporting assets. After a few meetings I narrowed down the most useful scenarios depending on page margins, font sizes, page restrictions, and user level. After an interim presentation, it was decided to increase from 1-2 deliverables to 5 custom templates, an expanded asset library, and training materials.
After 6 months, each district within the West Coast will document the statistics of which pre-designed template had the most use. After collecting the data, the most used pre-designed template will have variations made for the following release, to keep within the competitive nature of the business.
In addition to the templates themselves, there was an overwhelming desire during the feedback process for training to be implemented. Given the tight amount of resources, I put together a style guide explaining how to use the templates and resources where a self-paced learner could enhance their skillsets.
