When I started at Aegon the product manager at the time asked me to help out with 2 important goals:
There was already a Design System in place but after reviewing it and gathering user feedback it was deemed insufficient. It was created on a free-for-all model and had very little to no management on the libraries which were approached from a product perspective. Build once and released in the hope everyone would use the same component. As a result there were over 10 different step indicators and confusion all around on how to effectively implement and maintain the system.
From start to finish it took about 3 years to achieve complete adoption. As the Product Owner & UX Lead I was responsible for the A to Z. From creation to adoption to company wide implementation. Below a few highlights of this journey.
The initial team budget would cover us for a year. However we all knew that if we want the design system to be a success we need to approach it differently than they’ve done before. The starting perspective was that of a product; create it once and let other people have their fun. But as time goes on design patterns change and development languages get updates.
Parallel to creating the first version of our service we set out to prove a continuous business case as quickly as possible. Through a Business Model Canvas that we worked through with several stakeholders we created a clear view of what we wanted to achieve together. who we are doing it for and how we could get it done. Then by calculating our potential user base and the intensity of usage it was clear that we would gain the most by focussing on our developer’s efficiency initially. We defined intensity based on 3 things:
By creating clarity on what we were standing to gain on those three moments (and what we need to have that gain) vs a ‘what if we don’t’ scenario it became crystal clear that the gains far outweighs a continuous investment for a dedicated team.
The shift from a product approach towards a service approach to ensure sustainability forced us to figure out a new way of working. Instead of building the design system in isolation we actively involved (potential) users in our decision making. In the first phase we did extensive research on what problems users faced in the previous design attempts and Aegon’s total digital landscape. We’ve set up several rituals on a bi-weekly basis to keep in touch with our users and a active support channel on teams.
Knowing that we had to prove our value as soon as possible we partnered up with our mortgage team, acting as our launching partner. This gave us a clear scope on what digital experience to systemise, continuous conversation, sharing of implementation challenges and an evaluation at the end. With this lean approach we went from 0 to live in less than 3 months and were able to prove our added value on all the promised key point indicators.
The big key difference with previous attempts is that we now have ongoing conversations that helped us create champions who actually wanted to use and implement our design system. As a result the quality is of a much higher level.
On a continuous basis we’ve been keeping track of how well the service is performing on 2 sides: those who use it such as designers, developers, marketeers and content managers. And those who experience it, our customers and advisors. After several different attempts we ended up by applying the System Usability Scale validation method for our users as this was the tool that told us the most on where we should improve and could be calculated towards an NPS score which made sense for management. As implementation spread out around the organisation we’ve kept track of the before and after impact.
Due to our way of working we could release a new stable version every 2 weeks with clear communication on breaking changes & how to negate them. Teams were always in control and responsible themselves on what version they are on and if they felt the need to update. This approach has led to seamless iterations on our components as requirements grew. For example by adding digital accessibility or security demands.
