In addition to creating a standardised process, I led the team in using new tools and techniques that made us faster and more effective.
Workshops
I believe workshops are an essential part of any design process. At their best, workshops unlock untapped creativity, spark unexpected ideas and facilitate fast-failure.
I encouraged collaboration through workshops for both generative ideation and idea validation. Whether informal sketching sessions or multi-day seminars, the aim was to get lots of ideas in the room. We brought together people from all over the business. We brought in our customers. All with the goal of quick sketching solutions.
Firefly’s design system
Early on, I introduced Sketch to replace Illustrator as our defacto screen design tool. Later I brought in tools like Zeplin to provide better specifications. We also used Abstract for file version control.
I could see the potential of these tools wasn’t fully realised. I started a project to create a pattern library. This later became a full design system, containing over 200 components and for the web, iOS and Android.
This accelerated output from the team but presented a problem. We now had a kit of predefined elements, but this threatened to kill invoative solutions.
I solved this obstacle by introducing a 2-step visual design process. In Visual Discovery designers were free to create whatever interface best answered the users’ problem. Then, in Visual Production, this solution was translated to use existing components where possible.
Sometimes this created the need for new components. If that happened, we’d discuss as a team and introduce these where only absolutely necessary.