Design Systems

Design systems are the foundation of consistent, scalable product design. By standardizing components, patterns, and guidelines, they streamline collaboration, ensure brand consistency, and accelerate the design and development process. A solid foundation is essential for delivering exceptional user experiences.

Throughout the years, I have worked on many different design systems and I would say that at my previous role at Ivanti it was both the most challenging and rewarding. At Ivanti, we faced the challenge of unifying multiple products following several acquisitions. Each product came with its own set of customers, goals, and, in some cases, its own design system. Ivanti also had an existing but outdated system called "Spark." It quickly became clear that we needed to consolidate these disparate elements into a single, cohesive framework. This realization led to the creation of the Ivanti Design System (IDS).

The process began with a comprehensive audit of all products to identify core components, design patterns, and common UI elements. From there, we defined foundational elements such as color, typography, and base components, like buttons, form fields, and text, ensuring they aligned with the new brand guidelines developed by our marketing team. Once the fundamentals were established, we tackled more complex components, including grids, lists, and forms, which were built using these base elements.

Next, we developed standardized design patterns for frequently used layouts like table pages, detail views, navigation, and filtering. These patterns provided consistency across applications while simplifying implementation for our design and development teams.

Collaboration was critical throughout the process. We partnered closely with engineering and product management to gather requirements, address diverse use cases, and test our assumptions. We also conducted A/B testing with users to validate design decisions and optimize outcomes.

To ensure accessibility and ease of use for our design team, we built the entire design system in Figma, providing a centralized, cloud-based resource for our designers. With Figma, designers could easily access, apply, and update components as needed, enabling faster, more efficient workflows and better collaboration across teams.

On the development side, we worked closely with engineering to implement the design system across our product ecosystem. This required building multiple versions of the system to support both Angular and React frameworks, ensuring flexibility and compatibility across our applications. The result was a scalable, cohesive design system that unified Ivanti's product portfolio while enhancing efficiency, consistency, and the overall user experience.

*IDS was the effort of every designer/developer on the UX team. It took many iterations and months of refinement to get to where it is today. It is a labor of love and it is still actively being worked on today. You will see some examples and some statistics on the impact IDS had below.