WisePeople
Building a single design team from five different ways of working
Wisepeople is a software house and technology partner delivering digital products for clients across various industries, from services and e-commerce to complex B2B systems and applications.
The design team works concurrently on multiple projects, making it essential to establish common standards, tools, and workflows that maintain quality regardless of the project or the person leading it.
One team, common standards
I am developing a shared design system and UI Core, creating templates, organizing workflows in Figma, and ensuring the quality of UX and handoff.
At Wisepeople, I am responsible for the substantive leadership of a five-person design team and the development of a shared project culture.
When I took on this role, designers largely worked according to their own rules. File structures, workflows in Figma, component usage, and design standards varied. The existing design system also required organization and development
My goal was to create a single, cohesive way of working without taking away designers’ autonomy.
We strive to treat each project as a source of new components, patterns, and knowledge that can be reused. Every project should leave behind something that will help us in the next one.
My role
I am not solely focused on managing the team. I still lead my own projects, design SaaS products, conduct UX audits, and am responsible for UX in some projects carried out by other designers.
I regularly review the team’s work, develop standards, have discussions with designers, and participate in decisions regarding their development and recruitment.
During periods of lower workload, I also organize internal projects, such as templates, components, or plugins for Figma, which we later use in our daily work.
leading a 5-person team
processes, standards, and work organisation
building a shared design system from scratch
interviews with the team
WCAG and GEO as part of the design standard
introducing audits into the offering
templates and custom Figma plugins
More UX, less design by intuition
One of my goals was to shift the team towards a more mature Product Design.
We place greater emphasis today on UX, audits, analytics, heatmaps, user behaviors, and accessibility. We are also developing the way we prepare estimates, so that we can analyze the structure and scope of the future product at this stage.
Results and conclusions
A shared design system, templates, and reusing existing solutions already allow us to shorten parts of the design work.
Approximately 12% estimated time savings in streamlined stages of the process
However, the most important effect is the common standard of work. Five designers may have different specializations and ways of thinking, but projects benefit from the same foundations, undergo a common quality control, and develop resources that remain in the organization for the future.
