SnackPaq Design System

SnackPaq Design System

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Project Overview

Client: LINQ (Education Technology)
Industry: Education Technology & ERP
Project Type: Design System Creation
Role: Lead Designer

Project Summary

While at LINQ, I led the development of a design system called Snackpaq in Adobe XD. This design system was created from scratch to address the company’s need for rapid mock-up development and visual consistency across all products. Given LINQ’s acquisition-driven growth strategy, it was essential to create a system that could integrate new software platforms while maintaining uniformity across the brand. Snackpaq was designed to empower development teams to quickly build and prototype designs, ensuring that products remained cohesive and visually aligned.

Goals & Objectives

The main objective of the Snackpaq design system was to create a centralized library of design elements that would streamline the development process and ensure consistency across LINQ’s various products. Specific goals included:

  • Accelerate Design Process: Create a system that allowed design and development teams to quickly generate mock-ups and prototypes.
  • Ensure Consistency Across Products: Maintain visual and functional consistency across LINQ’s various software platforms, particularly as new acquisitions were integrated.
  • Support Scalability: Build a flexible system that could easily adapt to new platforms and evolving product requirements as LINQ grew through acquisitions.
  • Enhance Collaboration: Improve communication between design and development teams by providing a shared resource for UI components and design guidelines.

Research & Discovery

User Research:

Before building the design system, I conducted interviews with LINQ’s design and development teams to understand their challenges and pain points. The main issues identified included:

  • Inconsistent Designs Across Products: Each product team had its own design approach, leading to inconsistent user experiences and visual styles across the LINQ ecosystem.
  • Time-Consuming Prototyping: Designers and developers often spent unnecessary time creating mock-ups from scratch, slowing down the overall product development cycle.
  • Difficulty Integrating Acquisitions: As LINQ grew through acquisitions, integrating new platforms with a unified design language became increasingly difficult.

Competitive Analysis:

I analyzed design systems used by other companies, particularly those in acquisition-heavy industries. This research helped identify best practices for building a scalable design system that could support a variety of products and platforms while maintaining consistency.

Design & Strategy

The strategy for Snackpaq centered on creating a modular, flexible design system that could be used across all LINQ products, regardless of their specific use case or target audience. Key design decisions included:

  1. Centralized Component Library:

    • Snackpaq was built around a centralized library of UI components, including buttons, form fields, navigation elements, and more. Each component was designed to be easily customizable, allowing teams to adapt them to different product requirements while maintaining a consistent look and feel.

  2. Consistency Across Platforms:

    • To ensure visual consistency, I created detailed style guides that outlined typography, color schemes, spacing, and other design elements. This ensured that every product, whether new or existing, adhered to the same visual language, providing a seamless experience for users across the LINQ ecosystem.

  3. Rapid Prototyping:

    • I focused on enabling rapid prototyping by creating pre-built templates for common workflows and screens, such as dashboards, login pages, and forms. These templates allowed design teams to quickly generate mock-ups without starting from scratch, reducing the time needed to produce working prototypes.

  4. Scalability for Acquisitions:

    • Given LINQ’s acquisition-driven growth strategy, Snackpaq was designed to be flexible enough to integrate new products and platforms. The component library and style guide were built with scalability in mind, ensuring that new teams could easily adopt the system and integrate their products into the broader LINQ ecosystem.

  5. Collaboration and Documentation:

    • To improve collaboration between designers and developers, I included thorough documentation within Snackpaq. Each component was accompanied by detailed guidelines on how it should be used, along with code snippets to help developers implement the designs consistently.

Implementation & Development

Once the design system was defined, I collaborated with development teams to ensure it was implemented effectively across all products. Key steps included:

  • Component Creation in Adobe XD:
    I built out the entire Snackpaq design system in Adobe XD, including components, templates, and style guides. This allowed designers to easily access and use the system within their design workflows.

  • Developer Integration:
    I worked closely with developers to ensure the components were easily implementable. Each design element was accompanied by code snippets and implementation guidelines, helping developers quickly apply the designs in their codebase.

  • Onboarding and Training:
    To ensure widespread adoption of Snackpaq, I created onboarding materials and held training sessions with design and development teams across LINQ. This helped teams understand how to use the system effectively and provided them with the tools they needed to create consistent designs.

Outcome & Results

Snackpaq delivered significant improvements in both design consistency and efficiency across LINQ’s products:

  • Faster Prototyping:
    By using pre-built components and templates, teams were able to reduce the time needed to create mock-ups by 40%, allowing for faster iteration and development.

  • Improved Design Consistency:
    The design system ensured that all LINQ products adhered to the same visual and functional guidelines, resulting in a 50% reduction in design inconsistencies across the platform.

  • Smoother Integration of Acquisitions:
    New product teams were able to adopt Snackpaq quickly, reducing the time it took to integrate new acquisitions into the LINQ ecosystem by 30%.

  • Enhanced Collaboration:
    The detailed documentation and shared resources within Snackpaq improved collaboration between designers and developers, resulting in a more cohesive development process and fewer miscommunications.

Lessons Learned & Reflections

Building Snackpaq highlighted the importance of scalability and flexibility in a design system, particularly in a company that grows through acquisitions. One of the key takeaways from this project was the need for a well-documented, centralized system that can be easily adopted by new teams. By creating a flexible system with strong documentation, we were able to streamline the design process and ensure consistency across all LINQ products.

Moving forward, I would recommend regularly updating the design system to reflect new product requirements and evolving design trends. Continuing to gather feedback from design and development teams will also help ensure that Snackpaq remains a valuable resource for all stakeholders.