Design System for Tallinn University
UX/UI design, Research
CHALLENGE
Tallinn University is missing an easily accessible and easy-to-use design system for the digital environment.
SOLUTION
Create a uniformly understandable design system for digital solutions for the university.
TIME
6 months
METHODS
Comparative analysis, user interviews, user testing, low-fidelity prototyping, and high-fidelity prototyping.
TOOLS
Figma, WordPress, Miro, Adobe Suite, Zoom, Google Workspace.
Discover
Research
Getting familiar with the similarities and differences between design systems, pattern libraries and style guides/books was the basis for the project. It gave me an understanding of why a big organization (university) needs a design system instead of a style book.
Analyze
The second part of the discovery phase was to analyse the shortcomings of the current Tallinn University style book and compare the universities’ digital solutions in correspondence to the style book. The current universities' style book is only accessible as a PDF, therefore it is not possible to copy elements from the book. There is also visible inconsistency across universities’ digital pages. In total, 8 different pages and an app were analyzed.
Define
Interviews
To get a detailed overview of how much the current style book is being used, interviews with Tallinn University employees were conducted.
Defining the Requirements
Taking into account the interviews with the employees of Tallinn University and the results of the comparative analysis, the requirements for the design system of Tallinn University were defined. Important keywords: accessible, consistent (the design system itself should follow universities’ style), possibility to download elements, more content than the current style book has.
Ideate and Design
In the ideation phase the emphasis was on sketching out the basic wireframes of the design system. Information architecture was created taking into account the current style book as well as different design system examples and interviews. The last part of the ideation phase was choosing the platform which the design system will be built on (Figma).
The design phase consisted on bringing everything to Figma, following the style of Tallinn University (colors, typeface, etc.)
User testing
User tests and interviews were conducted with 8 people - both students and employees of Tallinn University. The tests consisted of four exercises, where one of the exercises was re-designing one University sub-page. The goal of the user tests was to see if the design system is uniformly understandable and easy to use.
All participants said they see value in the design system and the majority said they would use it in their design process. It was mentioned, though, that Figma might be a bit overwhelming to a person who has never used design software.
Conclusion
The created design system will be taken as a basis for further development at Tallinn University. Big organizations (like a university) benefit from having a design system in the long run - it helps to keep all organizational channels consistent, therefore more reliable.