Upon being hired at StackPath, I was tasked with building a UX team to help create a next-gen application based on a design system built from the ground up. The team eventually consisted of UX Designers, UX Researchers, UI Developers and UI Architects. By taking a more modern approach of a UX team by incorporating both design + development, we were able to iterate on the design of components quickly and ensure that they were being developed in the design system with a focus on the developer experience. With a design system, your users are both the end user of the application but also the engineering teams that have to consume them. A huge request was a “dark mode” with StackPath’s application. From the beginning we made sure to include it in every decision with color choices to ensure both light and dark modes would pass contrast tests for accessibility. Speaking of accessibility: it was baked into every component.

We eventually reached a point where we didn’t need to design full screen mockups in Figma anymore and we were able to rapidly prototype them in code with the design system. This helped immensely in administering user and usability tests as we could account for every interaction a user might take as opposed to having “static” mockups. We could quickly iterate on a flow and all work could be used towards the end product.