Saying 'No-No' to digital anarchy: unleashing the 'know-how' of design systems
Samantha Fanning (she/her), Head of Digital Experience and Vincent Harding (he/him), Head of Experience Design
University College London
Maintaining consistency across a digital estate, across apps and interactions, for diverse audiences (and faculty fife-doms) can be a thankless, repetitive task.
You often feel your sole job is to say No to things, to block activity or do the same foundational work again, and again, and again. And again.
And for those of us who manage both the design and development part of the story, it can sometimes be tricky to get everyone collaborating through the delivery process of a new website or app.
Unless, of course, you have a design system to operationalise a lot of the hard work for you, which can be a key enabler to help creativity and innovation flourish across your institution without compromising consistency.
Takeaways:
We’ll explain how a design system is so much more than a style guide or asset library, and how it can make many time-consuming battles and problems go away
We’ll share tips on how to decide what your own should be, and how to approach getting buy-in
We’ll be brutally honest about the mistakes we made and help you understand our learnings along the way
Bio
Samantha runs product and platform teams at UCL as part of the institution’s Digital Experience service. This covers content, design, UX and insight, as well as managing related digital technologies and processes involved in the delivery of (award-winning!) digital experiences.
She’s been lucky enough to work at some amazing brands in her career, all charity or public sector, so you’ll spot a unifying theme of how to do more, with less, and not break yourself in the process.
And because she hates disagreements, working more hours than are actually available, and wasted effort, she has fallen in love with the benefits of Design Systems.
————-
Vincent’s life is ruled by detail, he is the kind of person that can become passionate about the position of the dot above an “i”.
For this reason, he ended up in the world of design and UX many years ago. Starting life as a creative designer, working with many blue-chip companies, he was drawn to the world of digital in the 90’s… those heady days of corporate logos being animated gifs and no website being complete without an “under construction” graphic lurking somewhere.
Today, he oversees the user centred design activities at UCL and one of his main responsibilities is looking after the production and existence of the forthcoming UCL Design System.
