Offerpad Design System

Role
Design System Designer
Timeline
1 year
Overview

Offerpad was a new real estate tech company, that lacked consistency and efficiency among our design language. While at Offerpad I was tasked with leading the development of our design system to help improve on those inefficiencies.

Problem

Offerpad was spending too much time and effort reinventing the wheel from a design and engineering perspective. Their also was an inconsistent design language amongst all products.

Solution

I collaborated with engineering to create a shared design language amongst our products and speed up dev time for our products.

How we did it

Collaboration: I established a close working relationship with engineering to in order to identify key components and patterns that create the most challenges and take up unnecessary time. We met frequently to ensure the quality of the components as well as to discuss any challenges they were facing.

Create a process: I worked with engineering to create a system that made it easier to communicate where in the process we were when creating new components. This process streamlined things and held us accountable.

Build as we go: As the only designer building out our design system, I didn't really have much time to spend hours of time building out a comprehensive system. Many times I had to build as we went and refinement came as we worked with the same components in numerous places.

Takeaways
  1. Design Systems have dedicated teams for a reason. After building a design system, it was clear why there are teams dedicated solely to this design discipline. Although possible to build a design system with a limited team, it is extremely difficult when there is not dedicated time allocated to accomplishing it.
  2. Start with the most impactful. Most people believe that the first place to start with a design system is the button. But that's an easy way to fall on your face. Had a started with a more complex and complicated component, I could have saved my team more time. Building out a button takes considerably less time than a key component that has much deeper nuances.
  3. Collaboration is key. Building a design goes beyond just design. There are multiple important parties to building an successful design system but you partnership with your team and engineering is crucial. Understanding what your team needs from a design aspect and what will make engineering job easier as well is how you create a system that doesn't go to the design graveyard.