Raina Shannon

IxDesign + App Styleguide

The case:

When my team and I began renovating a heavily-used, legacy application, we quickly realized the effort would require strong, centralized documentation for designers and developers to reference in order to replicate like workflows, create visual consistency, and help unify logic.

UX design layout titled 'Toolbar in Context: Configured for a New Workflow,' displaying a full view of a 3-step portfolio creation interface in 'Research Center'. Annotations on the left describe the panels, while two overlapping interface states show the portfolio setup steps, including a search filter, an open 'Actions' dropdown menu, and a portfolio asset breakdown chart.

The role:

For this project, I assumed the role of interaction designer. I was in charge of creating and curating a framework system for our product that worked within the brand style guide, used and/or contributed to our centralized design system, and also worked for our users; some of whom had been relying on this application long before there was ever branding.

Multiple screens of the toolbar showing usage and styling patterns Want to see the whole styleguide? Click to view the PDF

The solve:

This document functioned as a source of truth: a style guide and pattern library for our work. We started by creating a z-axis layering system to help determine what UI to use for what instance. Over time, we centralized all our page’s actions around a common header and toolbar style.

Not only did we find this crucial for the team as we created more screens and functions, but ultimately helpful for the user as well. The lesson here? We create trust, familiarity and ease of use within products, large and small, when we are consistent in our decisions.

Design system diagram visualizing the z-axis and z-index hierarchy for a web application. An isometric view shows four levels along the axes, mapping components such as a data table (Grid), screener/filter, list filter, and grid-level actions.

Back to Portfolio

#caseStudy