Using a design system to create a unified suite of products

A leading consumer intelligence company came to 3Pillar Global looking for help developing dashboards and data visualization templates for a new data product they were launching. It became clear to our team as we were building these assets that the company also needed a streamlined way of carrying design updates beyond a single product.

Our team knew that the large library of design assets we were creating for our existing engagement would need to be propagated throughout a number of the company’s existing products, as well as any new products in development or on the roadmap. With their UX team already overworked and an existing Design System that was both sparingly used and sorely in need of an update, we saw this as a golden opportunity to provide help that went beyond merely performing the work that we were hired to do. Our team’s consultative approach and laser focus on providing value helped the client see the potential of committing to an overhaul of their Design System.

Based on the products the intelligence company had in-market, as well as the ones they were planning to introduce, our UX team saw an immediate opportunity to accelerate the client’s development cycles by maturing their existing Design System. We felt this could help accomplish much of what we were brought on board to do at a far more accelerated clip.

With a goal of helping unify look, feel, function, and flow, we conducted user research with a number of their customers. This helped inform the creation of user personas that guided our global UX team as we enhanced and improved upon their Design System.

The Design System we delivered consisted of user flows and a set of reusable design components that could be deployed across many of the company’s digital experiences, dramatically decreasing the amount of time it took to get new products and features shepherded through the design and development process.

“You have been amazing throughout the engagement. You’ve been a true ‘pillar’…and have helped transform and organize us into a scalable team, which will help us transition from a ‘Product’ scope to a ‘Platform’ scope. We’re more prepared for the challenge than we have ever been.”

-Director of UX, Leading consumer intelligence company

The result of our work together was a unified suite of platforms with a modern, intuitive user experience. At the strategic level, we also helped the company integrate design more deeply into their ongoing digital transformation with the introduction of their new Design System. At the more tactical level, we introduced reusable components like dashboards and reports that significantly improved users’ ability to understand data and derive insights from it. Users could count on having the same intuitive experience across the company’s entire platform rather than having disparate, disjointed experiences across a suite of different products.