The details are not details. They make the product. It will in the end be these details that give the product its life.
- Charles Eames
Delegate repetitive work to a system and use the time saved to get important stuff done.
No team ever feels like they have the time or resources to be successful. One of the best ways to get more done with less is by delegating. And, delegating doesn’t always mean finding someone to do your work for you (although that’s always a great plan). Delegating can also mean assigning work to a process or system.
A good design system reduces work significantly by reducing the number of times someone needs to solve a common problem. At SumoLogic, our UX Sumo Style Guide was well used both within and outside the UX team to get work done. Consistent branding kept Marketing and Product design aligned and reduced rework, reusable UX Componentry eliminated designer rework, shared Personas kept teams aligned on our target audiences.
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Fonts matter.
Enterprise employees spend their days dealing with micro-annoyances. Each trivial, but collectively they comprise an overbearing weight. Enterprise collaboration application should do their best to to avoid adding to that burden.
One micro-annoyance is UI that jumps around on the screen in response to user inputs. Typical fonts use different space depending on their weights.
At RingCentral, we designed a Multiplexed font with seamless weight transitions for all letters including oblique. This solved a common collaboration app problem where typically a Bold weight is used as an indicator of an unread status.
And, a new Display font designed at the same time anchors page headers to the copy on the page.
Unread/Read (Bold/Regular) messages take up the same screen space
Illustrations matter.
And, solid attention to color palettes allows the system to work across co-branded implementations
A consistent and thoughtful Illustration Style Guide enables a replicable process for a global team to ground the user in context and provide the RingCentral apps with a relatable personality.
Clear guidelines for open space in which our characters can move helps the system work across mobile and desktop form factors.
Our mascot, Thor, appears somewhere in every illustration. Her presence draws a thread of consistency, familiarity, and joy throughout our audience’s journey.
