This project is all about organization and structure when I worked at General Motors, which is one of my many strengths. I worked with a large group of people (1000+) who were all involved with the Infotainment interface on the dashboard. Unfortunately, due to non-disclosure agreements with the company, I do not have images from this experience, but I can at least take you through what I was responsible for.
The Problem
I was one of the three people in charge of taking changes to various specs to the many components and updating them accordingly. The design system was originally created by my most senior coworker, and it had everything a brand designer needed to design their various components.
However, from my point of view, there was something lacking in the design system: Order. Structure. Granted, there was a little bit already - the components were in alphabetical order, but within the components it was chaos! Brand order was in the order it was originally entered in, so they were in a different order for each component. Within the multi-faceted components, some were listed separately, some were listed under the same brand name, some were all put within one art board. The arrangement of it annoyed me slightly but, at that time, I was new and we were busy with lots of updates to accomplish every two weeks, so I stayed quiet and did my job.
One day, things had slowed up significantly - people were going on vacation, we had a week of shutdown, etc. I asked my coworkers what they needed me to work on this week to help them out, and they had nothing for me. So, they asked me: What would YOU like to work on?
The Role
I decided to take the lead and reorganize the brand names and components in the design system. It was a large undertaking, but we had the time and I definitely had the initiative - I am all about order and structure!
This issue had not occured to my coworkers, but they were intrigued by my passion for this particular endeavor. They asked me to come up with an exact plan to overhaul the design system and present it to them as soon as possible.
I started by reordering the brand names within each component page. I figured alphabetical order works best.
Because there multiple models under the brand name (i.e. Cadillac FF1 and Cadillac FF2), I originally decided to arrange them by model year, but there was a snag: The condition from my coworkers was to keep the two 31XX brand names next to eachother. When we go in and update the various brand names, typically any of the Chevy 31XX changes also changes GMC 31XX specs, so it made sense to keep them together. So, unfortunately, I had to scrap that idea, but keeping the alphabetical order was absolutely acceptable.
The other issue was the multi-faceted components. These are just a couple that are highlighted on my recreated list. The goal was to make them all have the same structure across all components. Overall, they will be easier to locate for everyone - brand designers, software developers, etc.
When I presented this new structure of the design system, my coworkers approved of the overhaul and gave me permission to begin work! I had less than a month before the updates would start flowing in again, so I started reordering and structuring immediately.
In total, I would say I had almost 200 separate pages to update, so I needed to keep track with an Excel sheet and the list of all the components, plus I had to make sure to list each change in the governance and the changelog, much like I did when making regular updates in the design system.
I made the changes on each page - reordered each brand section by alphabetical order and put any multi-faceted components under one brand name, and I even corrected some capitalization and pluralization issues in some brands. I worked steadily and I was easily able to finish by the deadline.
In all honesty, I didn't think anyone outside of our group would notice the change, but I was wrong! After going through a couple of sprints, I had a few brand designers at a meeting stood up and said, "Has anyone noticed the change in the design system? It looks amazing! I can find things now! Who was responsible for that?" I was floored by this response! My coworkers let them know about my work and gave me all the credit, saying the design system now has it's very own librarian. It was a very proud day for me!