Emerald Design
Delta Dental's New Design System
Project Overview
Client: Delta Dental
Duration: Ongoing
Team: 4 UX Designers, 2 UX Researchers, 5 Developers, 1 Project Managers, 3 UX Designers, and myself
Objective: Develop a comprehensive Design System to standardize UI components, set usage standards, streamline development processes, and ensure a cohesive brand experience across all Delta Dental digital platforms.
The Challenge
Delta Dental faced inconsistencies in their digital user interfaces, leading to inefficiencies in development and a fragmented user experience.
Our goal was to create a unified Design System that would enhance consistency, improve developer productivity, and provide a better user experience.
The Approach
We had just started the transition of the platform to React. During that phase we did not make any major updates, but focused on parity for the transition. That way we could side step any confusion.
We wanted to make sure that we were holistically looking at the all LOBs, all breakpoints, all dev assets, basically everything. We had to plan out everything to ensure we were accounting for all connections, dependencies, and anything else that may come up.
Our process involved audits, defining core issues, ideating guidelines and solutions, prototyping, and testing.
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Discovery
We created a core working group that audited the current designs to identify patterns.
We also reviewed the live site, as well as the Dev story books.
Basically we looked everywhere to gather everything.
A governance group was overseeing outputs, and was consulting at this point.
We started with comprehensive research to understand the current state and gather insights from users and developers.
We sent out a survey to the dev team to understand what their needs and limitations are. We then conducted follow-up interviews with selected participants to delve deeper into specific issues.
We settled on the following items.
Define / Design
Using the insights gathered, we organized a design sprint to map out the primary pain points and opportunities for improvement.
I collaborated with the governance team and the cross-functional teams, to ensure the design system supports various platforms and use cases.
From there we had roadmapping workshops where we discussed trade-offs, managed interdependencies, and resolved or identified potential conflicts.
We also needed to incorporate the larger team into the process at this point. Our designers, business, and dev are all at different levels.
Some employees have never had a design system to use and would need training.
Sequence of process
We ended up with the following for the first round of the system.
Key Features
Patterns
From The Team
Of Truth
Conclusion & Next Steps
The Design System successfully addressed the identified issues, enhancing consistency and efficiency.
Positive feedback from users and developers confirmed the effectiveness of our approach.
Future plan
Let's see how I
can help you
I was able to help Delta Dental
I helped to integrate the various Delta Dental Platforms into a singular experience for our Dental Providers and Patients to connect and share critical information. What can I do for you?