DESIGN GUIDELINES WEBSITE
Company: Tableau
Project: Create online design guidelines
Role: Senior UX Designer
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Tableau's design guidelines were in the form of a 200 pg PDF for more than 2 years. It was difficult to update them, to make people aware of the updates. It was also difficult to find what you needed in the document because it was so long.
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The design website was finally born and I took the lead on converting this huge document to an online, usable format.
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The Problem
The How
As Senior designer
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I created page designs, layouts and all visuals for the website
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I partnered with content writers who helped rewrite and pare down existing copy
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I created all the webpages in CMS, essentially building this section of the website
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Had weekly reviews with visual design and UX design teams
The website's IA was adopted from the PDF so luckily we didn't have to start from scratch. I did work with the visual design team to use a grid layout that would work with all the different page layouts used in the site. I worked on creating the layouts for each section and the design examples and how to format them. We had to show examples of each component and then break them down into specifics/redlines for the designers. I also designed a section of how to use correctly because many designers asked about different uses for components.
The Results
The design guidelines site (DLS) was a huge success! It has evolved much since it's initial release, but moving to an online format made it so much easier to update. It also allowed the design team to evangelize our guidelines more easily. It brought efficiency to the design process and allowed the entire organization to view the guidelines which increased consistency and reduced confusion. Today there are many other sections that have been added to the design site making it one of our core elements of the design process.