Salesforce Lightning Design System
I was the founding lead designer for one of the most popular enterprise design systems, the Salesforce Lightning Design System.
Overview
The Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS) is a living open-source design system. Salesforce is committed to creating perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust products for all users. All SLDS components include ARIA markup and guidelines to help people with disabilities use and contribute to Salesforce applications. Use the SLDS CSS framework with any tech stack, or take advantage of the guidance on using SLDS with Salesforce technologies, including Lightning Web Components, Aura, and Visualforce.
The Story
Salesforce needed to modernize and overhaul the mobile and desktop experience across several products, teams, and platforms.
Salesforce1
Working with PMs and engineering for Salesforce1 and the precursor to the Lightning Experience, design system priorities were aligned with product.
Lightning Design System
This is some of the work I am most proud of. During my five and a half years at Salesforce, I had the opportunity to impact how one of the largest enterprise technology companies ship product design.
Design Tokens & Theo
I paired closely with engineering to architect and implement design tokens, which became an industry-standard way of scaling design systems across multiple platforms and devices. We also built an open-source tool called Theo to generate the tokens.
During this time, I managed to convince the entire organization to move to a four-based metric system!
Getting Buy-In
I pitched the design system to stakeholders in engineering and design leadership, and got buy-in. With the Lightning Design System funded and a team formalized, I received a title change to clarify my role. I conducted design systems work (which included UX design, visual design, frontend development, and documentation). I drafted the team vision and charter and worked closely with our team’s people manager on planning and presenting our goals with the organization.
Partnered with a researcher, we user-tested early and often with proof of concepts. We facilitated conversations with third-party app developers to find pinpoints for the design system framework.
Additionally, I led the UX organization’s evangelism and outreach efforts including being the Editor-in-chief for the team blog, the admin for the social media accounts, organizer of various meet ups and conference sponsorships, writing, speaking, and coaching both internal and external people on best practices using the design system.
I also mentored designers to level up their skills in frontend development.
Results
After elevating our team’s output and perceived brand both internally and externally, I took on more responsibilities in mentoring other designers and developers, as well as being the point person for the information architecture and design patterns for the design system.
