Industry: SaaS
Primary Role: Lead Designer
Team Size: 4 (Director, Lead, Researcher, Sr. Designer)
Duration: 10 Weeks

Challenge: Due to acquisition strategies and evolution of value proposition, diligent delivers its services under different brands, different products, within different markets

Solution: A consolidated design system with governance structure that elevates the brand, defines how UIs of sub-brands relate, and creates efficiencies in the software development process

Diligent is the world leader in board management software and is rapidly growing through an acquisition strategy. To enable growth, a new design system was needed to establish a consistent visual experience for all products, define how sub-brands relate, and create efficiencies in design & implementation processes.

With a service-led approach, we immersed ourselves in the existing product ecosystem, facilitated conversations with stakeholders and customers, and ran co-creation workshops to identify and ideate towards opportunity areas. In addition to primary research and workshops, we performed an audit on 10+ products within their portfolio identifying unique and overlapping templates, components, and stylings.

We developed a design system including design principles aligned with pre-existing brand work, molecular component library for prioritized products within portfolio, guidelines documentation for brand, color, typography, iconography, grid systems, and spacing rules. Additionally, we facilitated a series of tutorial sessions with design challenges to aide the onboarding process for the internal design teams at Diligent.

Seven products implemented the design system within the first quarter of the launch of the design system. The design system has given teams an aligned vision, empowered them to bring products faster and better meet customer needs.

The design system enables Diligent to continue to evolve the business as needed, including growing its value proposition from board digital experiences to a comprehensive governance solution that appeals to new organizations.