Unifying Brands, Evolving Experiences, and Enhancing Staff Productivity
- Alan Mills
- Feb 23, 2023
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 20
Overview
I played a key role in the development and evolution of two design systems at Beeline, showcasing my ability to harmonize design and engineering. These experiences deepened my expertise in maintaining flexible yet robust component libraries, integrating designOps practices, and scaling systems to meet evolving business needs.
The Challenge
When Beeline merged with IQN in 2018, the company faced a critical need: unify the visual identity and user experience across platforms while transitioning from a monolithic product to a branded house. Our mission was to create a "single source of truth" for designers and developers, enabling a cohesive and scalable design language.
Key Contributions
1. The Unified Design System (v1)
Joined a team of 2 designers to finalize and document the "Unification" design system in Sketch.
Transposed guidelines into a web app.
Collaborated with engineering to ensure compatibility with existing tools like Bootstrap and Highcharts.js.
Delivered a comprehensive resource that enabled focus on persona-driven product work and UX research.
2. The Evolved Beeline Design System (v2)
Transitioned the design system to Figma, enhancing collaboration and design fidelity.
Contributed to a Vue.js-based system, supporting Beeline’s shift to persona-driven, multi-product solutions.
Focused on creating scalable design tokens to sync UI kits with component libraries, improving efficiency and consistency.
Advocated for an expressive solution to support multiple acquired brands into new unified solution.
Impact
Accelerated product launches by providing centralized, reusable design resources.
Enhanced cross-functional alignment, enabling a seamless shift toward multi-brand and multi-product strategies.
Iteratively improved the tools' efficacy by addressing pain points and adopting modern workflows.
Takeaways
This experience reinforced my passion for bridging the gap between design and development. By tackling complex challenges in design systems and integrating designOps strategies, I helped create tools that continue to drive innovation and scalability. We did learn that having an isolated Figma component library that was disconnected from the coded library led to potential discrepancies. Here, conversations about headless design systems and tokenization were presented as possible solutions. Leadership deprioritized this endeavor as they acquired 2 new companies and a restructuring went into place. While I no longer maintain these sites, you can view BDSv2 here.
