In summer 2019, I moved to New York City office to do a three month internship. I worked as UX design intern with the Google Ad Manager team where I was responsible for designing the first version of design system for the platform which helped standardize the product and also provide designers with reusable components to improve the velocity of their workflow.

I took the responsibility of auditing the components to designing them as a library that consists of reusable and customizable components which are used by the designers in the team to create meaningful interactions and interfaces. I worked with the engineers, senior interaction designers, a visual design lead to deploy the project. Unfortunately, due to NDA I am unable to share any specific details about the project. If you have questions about my experience, feel free to drop an email.

The design system was treated on par with a product by defining a similar process that helps in continuously maintaining it and building over it. I could not disclose the detailed comprehensive process due to the NDA, but the brief version of the process followed is as shown below.

1. Performed an audit of the components across the product to design and implement it in the library.

2. Designed and shipped the first version of the library of components for the product.

3. Componentized the major elements of the product to ship it to interaction designers as a library which improved the productivity of designers.

4. The design system helped in improving the consistency and performance of the product.

5. Conducted education and testing sessions for the designers to use the design system.

Creating and managing design system at scale
Learned about a creating a design system, its elements, creating customisable components, distributing the library, assist and train people in using the design system.

 

Balancing pace and perfection
As it was a fast paced project, there was need to strike the balance between speeding up towards the deadline but also take care of the important details.

 

Navigate through ambiguity
Move ahead without knowing the perfect answer for the questions. Walk past the hurdles and keep moving with trying multiple ideas.

 

Receiving feedback and iterating
Constantly engaging with the team and stakeholders to receive feedback on the constraints, limitations or requirements to iterate or revise the components to build the design system.