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Automating your design system and how to adapt your workflow — a case study
This case study aims to chronicle how I created the first Burberry Design System, implemented and automated the email campaign workflow, and migrated the design system from Sketch to Figma. I will demonstrate how I designed a plug-in ecosystem to create responsive templates in Sketch and Figma. This study will share insight into my process, as well as the tools and resources I used to create and implement the system.
The problem
Burberry used to send out 20 email campaigns per month. Each of these was designed and developed like a new project even if it shared similarities with the previous. This process was extremely time consuming and repetitive and made it more challenging to meet deadlines.
Nowadays, digital production can be challenging on such a scale. The Design Technician within the Email team identified that the department needed a design system based on templates to speed up the process.
I joined the Burberry Digital Design Team in January 2019. We decided to start our research by identifying possible solutions to the problem, and the following is what we did over the first four months until we migrated our system into Figma a year later.
Why a Design System?
These days companies do not have the time and/or resources to repeat processes every day. This is why it is crucial to automate as much as you can. A design system allows you to centralise your source of information and create reusable components and the ability to customise them. It also:
- Saves time on your processes;
- Ensures UX and UI consistency;
- Reduces cost across different teams;
- Increases and promotes innovation;
- Enables collaboration;
- Speeds up iterations and updates.
What is a Design System?
A design system is a collection of elements that helps to build complex structures more reliably; a…
