A scalable system

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In six months, my team and I strategized, researched, and a designed a beautiful and scalable design system documentation website that supports past and future expansion in an evergreen way. Through A/B testing, contextual interviews, and rapid prototyping, we delivered a website that serves the open-source design system, Cedar, that inspires both companies and customers alike.

Identifying the need

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During my tenure at REI, the Cedar design system grew so rapidly that we encountered a need to create a more scalable documentation site to support it. We had added so many components, patterns, and parts to Cedar and onboarded so many users and contributors to it that it was supporting a greater percent of the REI ecosystem than ever before, and it no longer met the needs of its users or contributors. I helped to lead the strategy, research, and design of a new documentation site that supported current and future expansion.

Research and strategy

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Through my interviews with our users—designers, developers, and product managers—I found opportunities in those who struggled to locate relevant information about components, tokens, and patterns, and even struggled to understand these concepts.

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I focused on developing a strategy for the information architecture that focused on creating clarity around these concepts—the backbone of our design system—as well as where all the elements are by satisfying the needs of our two primary personas—users that learned by doing and users that learned by reading.

Information architecture

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I explored different directions through wireframes and rapid prototyping to test how approaches landed with our users.