Design System
A design system from scratch: migration from Sketch to Figma and a rebrand across every Celonis product, with the MVP delivered in six months.
- Client
- Celonis
- Role
- Design System
- Team
- 2 designers (me included), 3 engineers
- Year
- 2022
Celonis uses process mining and AI to analyse and optimise how organisations work, with visualisations that improve operational efficiency.
Context
With Matthias Fritch, I set up a design system, migrated from Sketch to Figma and delivered a platform redesign in six months, aligning stakeholders, auditing the UI and building a strategic roadmap.
Objective
Create the UI kit, technical documentation, guidelines and processes, and drive design system adoption across 40 designers and 800 developers.
Solution
UI audits to build a complete UI kit and documentation, support through the Sketch-to-Figma move, communication channels to advocate adoption, a strategic roadmap tied to business goals, and mentoring the interns who rotated every six months.
- Technical documentation for the design system: guidelines, best practices, glossary, onboarding, UI kit releases and component health.
- Worked with engineers and stakeholders to keep it accurate and complete.
- Processes to keep the documentation updated as the system changed.
- Training and support so teams could find and use it.
- Onboarding guidelines and file structures for new team members.
- A strategic roadmap for the design system, aligned with product and business goals.
- Initiatives prioritised by impact, feasibility and alignment.
- Milestones and deliverables to track progress and measure success.
- Regular roadmap updates to keep stakeholders aligned.
- Built a team of Product Design and Design System Engineering specialists.
- Encouraged collaboration and knowledge sharing across the team.
- Ran regular design critiques to find new patterns.
- Navigated ambiguity and complexity to keep the team innovating.
- Promoted the design system’s adoption and value across the company.
- Shared best practices with the design community and gathered insights.
- Mentored the team on design system principles and practices.
- Acted as DesignOps & culture specialist to streamline workflows between design and engineering.
- Supported the teams moving from Sketch to Figma, and coached every intern with clear goals.
- Audited existing UI components and design assets.
- Built an inventory of UI elements to find redundancies and consolidate.
- Refined the UI kit with developers through usability testing and feedback.
- An asset architecture designed for usage, construction and adoption.
- Workshops and meetings to align stakeholders on the design system.
- Clear roles and responsibilities for accountability and ownership.
- Data to show the design system’s impact on business outcomes.
- Strategies to address concerns and keep momentum.
I gave a talk at Figma about how we started this design system from scratch, and we keep the templates and tokens file updated on the Figma Community.
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