Rally Enterprise Pattern Library
A pattern library (subset of Rally's Enterprise Tools Design System) made for designers, developers, and product managers that defines standards around reusable components for the Rally tools suite.
The Challenge
When I started at Rally, there were 10 textboxes and 12 dropdowns with different styles, 4 varying tab interactions, and over 50 shades of gray implemented in our enterprise tools, all being used by internal admins. Styling, components, and interactions were inconsistent and fragmented.
Thus, our goals were to simplify, modernize, and standardize the overall user experience for our internal admins and create a shared source of truth for our stakeholders:
Inspire and empower our PMs when envisioning new and improved tools to support the company’s products and solutions
Allow current and incoming designers to work more efficiently and deliver consistent designs through dynamic sketch symbols
A one-stop shop for design specs and in-depth functional documentation as a foundation to kickstart technical documentation and code snippets
My Role and Process
I collaborated with another designer to define the overall styling of new components. I led the documentation process, keeping principles from atomic design in mind, and prepared the component library for the transition into a design system.
1
Audit
The design team conducted a visual audit of the implemented tools and tracked down specific qualities to gauge our level of effort and create a game plan for the re-design.
2
Research
Met with design, product, and engineering stakeholders and interviewed users to further understand problems with our legacy tools and define the scope of work from a high level.
3
Ideation
Met on a weekly basis with my design team lead to brainstorming and ideate through the style guide and components as we cycled through separate meetings with engineering.
4
Design & dev 1-on-1's
I worked on this in tandem with 2 new projects on the roadmap, so I worked closely with the respective 5 engineers while they built components for their tools.
5
Outline & documentation
I wrote rules and guidelines to document the overall foundation, styling, components, layout, accessibility, etc.
Legacy Design
New Tools 2.0
Final Deliverable
After 16 months, I created a solid foundation for the Rally Enterprise design system. This pattern library consisted of dynamic Sketch symbols accompanied by guidelines and principles.
Samples from the Rally Enterprise 2.0 pattern library
Next Steps
- Technical documentation - Discuss components with developers and continue to iterate and implement code snippets to share with other product teams
- Revise and tidy up copy - Continue to work with copy writers to ensure that our language and voice are aligned with our brand
