Building a Standards Guide
When I first began this project, my boss asked,
“When do you think you will have this done?”
And me, eager to please replied, “Tomorrow, chief!!”
He simply blinked at me in return. I had been working on it for just over a week.
“No you won’t,” He said finally, shaking his head and laughing. “Better look again.”
And dear, dear me but he was right. It was bigger, MUCH bigger than I could immediately wrap my head around.
At such a big company as Domo, with a product already built that has had several hundred updates or so, going through files and ordering them into one place, that would allow future designers to design in the blink of an eye — well, that is no small thing. Right now my eyes are watering at the thought of it.
In fact, I started with a buddy designer helping me with it, supposed to be handling the android section while I did the iOS design, but after a few days, he burned out and was ready to quit, so I ploughed forward on my own.
The steps began like this. First, I was to take the scraps of an old style guide that some designers had been tinkering with for over two years, and take what was good and current, and put it somewhere intelligent in the new style guide. THEN I was to go through, and make sure that everything that was currently in the app, was in our style guide. I built many items in sketch, based off of site, hunted down designers asking for their most current files on subjects, and restructured the entire file into atomic design.
And that was only the half of it.
So in a nutshell, my goal with this guide was to make sure I got everything into a sketch file, so that the next designer could easily compile a new mock without having to search through all of Domo’s files for the components they needed, or email other designers, or attempt to find which files were the most up to date.
While this project was definitely a bear, it is absolutely going to be a time-saver for all designers in the future. And I also believe it will improve the continuity of Domo’s product, as well as improve usability for the users, because everything is pre-sized and pre-tested for best usability, and not left up to each designer to start from scratch.
PHEW that was long. If you are still here, I applaud you! My goal with this guide was to make sure I got everything into a sketch file, so that the next designer could easily compile a new mock without having to search through all of Domo’s files for the components they needed, or email other designers, or attempt to find which files were the most up to date. While this project was definitely a bear, it is absolutely going to be a time-saver for all designers in the future. And I also believe it will improve the continuity of Domo’s product, as well as improve usability, because everything is pre-sized and pre-tested for best usability.
