Design System: Union
When I joined The Knot a design system had already been started, but it had a long way to go before being a worthy investment of time and money. Designers were leading the initiative and spending 10% time on managing, creating, and curating elements. There was a lack of engineering adoption and system only included the most basic of atomic elements and patterns.
The teams had decided on a federation format for design system governance which slowed down the progress of introducing more elements to the system and delegating work to help it grow and increase adoption. There was a lack of true ownership and accountability for the growth of the system and that had to change in order for it to work.
A Worthy Investment
When The Knot merged with WeddingWire and XO Group became The Knot Worldwide, we worked with Pentagram in New York to redesign our long standing brand into something more modern and reflective of the direction we were going. Typically a rebrand effort of this size and scale would take months to upwards of a year to complete.
Thanks to the extensive nature of our full-stack design system and the team leading it, we were able to make incremental changes that lead to a full site refresh which is almost complete. This effort has allowed us to not only modernize our look but also our code and features to being more scalable across the board.
Impact (updated)
Recently The Knot rebranded themselves. If it was not for the robust design system effort that I lead, they would not have been able to make sure quick sweeping changes. This is a true testament to the hard work and impacts the team I helped lead accomplished.