Design systems case study: messaging components [Part 1]

I’ve been working at Wealthsimple as a Senior Product Designer, and during my time there, I have been on the design platform team, which means that I’ve been able to contribute to the design systems as well as to some platform-level work that would touch across the Wealthsimple eco-system.
Check out part one of the case study of the project that I have recently shipped. Enjoy!
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0:00 - Intro
1:06 - About the project
2:09 - Case study walk-through
15:19 - Outro & what’s next
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[@femkedesign]

Super grateful to Superpeer for being a sponsor of my channel! Check out Superpeer here. Superpeer is a great way to connect with mentors and join a community to help you grow! Check it out at superpeer.com/

[@basselh5621]

Please keep adding real-life project discussions like you did here! its a great help! thank you so much.

[@jared4760]

Brilliant! No one else is this transparent (including myself lol) and it's extremely refreshing and super helpful. I look forward to many more cool, insightful videos like this one...but first, PART 2!

[@femkedesign]

Thanks Jared!

[@rashikasliwal2791]

Love how you have added how to measure success for these new components! As a designer we tend to miss on success metrics and focus just on hand offs.

[@femkedesign]

For sure! It's such an important part of the process and super valuable in the future when it comes to case studies and job interviews :)

[@sebastianvisual33]

Love it! Yes, please create a video on how you define those Principles! 💌

[@femkedesign]

Yes will do! This has been a common request :)

[@sang-sang-park]

That is awesome! I would like to watch it too.

[@huwball]

Thank you so much for sharing this! This kind of insight look into how a real company is doing design systems work is invaluable

[@femkedesign]

You're welcome!

[@TotallyHonestReviews]

Femke great video! I love it when you make a specific example / task you worked on and explain it in detail. There is just too much general UX theory on KZbin we need more specific videos like this. Thank you! 🙂

[@femkedesign]

You're so welcome :)

[@mariiashyian2246]

Great case study! Thank you for sharing it with us. I really do appreciate such a huge amount of useful unique information I found on your channel. Can’t wait for the second part😊

[@femkedesign]

Yay so glad to hear it! Coming soon :)

[@nandhagopalgopalsamy1726]

Definitely need a deep dive into design principles

[@femkedesign]

It's coming in my upcoming design course :)

[@CarlitaDupin]

Hey Femke! I really look up to you and love how you present your work. I've just tackled a "similar-ish" project where I worked on a proposal to create different feedback components because our app relied 90% on alert dialogs when giving feedback to the user. The fact that I see similarities with what you just presented gave me so much confidence :) Sadly, we don't have half of the documentation here but we will get there. I love the "how to meassure success" for the components. Thank you so much for being so transparent. Best, Carla.

[@SaveMg]

Thank you for sharing to us Femke! You bring so much value in the process.

[@femkedesign]

My pleasure Marios 😊

[@vivianngai3194]

Great case study! Would love to learn about your Principles process!

[@hollymariedesign2819]

Your content helps me tremendously and makes me love design even more! Thank you so much for being a great resource for us newbie designers.

[@femkedesign]

You are so welcome!

[@meliibelle]

So helpful as someone just getting into the UX space!! Thank you for your videos, nothing like seeing real life examples ❤

[@femkedesign]

You're so welcome!

[@rubenphilip]

The walkthrough of the process is very insightful, learned quite a lot. The order and process that you put together is something that I wish to follow. Thanks a lot!🙏

[@femkedesign]

You’re welcome!

[@christyhu]

This is so helpful and interesting to watch! Thank you for sharing!

[@femkedesign]

You’re welcome!

[@laurelyaros8314]

This is extremely logical and useful for someone to see who is thinking about becoming a designer. Can this be replicated for a startup or small business?

[@gabrieladeliz3050]

Amazing presentation, learnt a lot from this ❤ Thanks for sharing the case study

[@femkedesign]

Thanks Gabriela!

[@bagchi_sagnik]

Very helpful video!

[@annphan]

Looking forward to the 2nd part!!!!

[@femkedesign]

Next week!

[@xubair96]

Hey thanks for sharing this. As a designer I also worked on a design system for a travel product that took 2 months. I can totally relate to your process. Thanks for making awesome content as always 😊

[@femkedesign]

Thank you so much!!

[@steffsamtoy3310]

Great case study ! Would love to learn about your Principles process 😀!

[@femkedesign]

A popular request!! On my list :)

[@luciochen123]

Yes! I am curious about the design principles, not many people talked about this concept :)

[@femkedesign]

Lots of questions about this, adding it as a topic to my list :)

[@fernandasaenz3747]

Great!!!!! Thanks a lot for sharing!!

[@femkedesign]

You’re welcome :)

[@samirwahab9697]

Thanks for sharing. It was too insightful.

[@femkedesign]

Glad it was helpful!

[@hannahluc1415]

This is so amazing. I've always struggled discussing design system work because the work and impact felt too "small". Thank you for sharing :)

[@femkedesign]

IMO design systems can have the biggest impact of all :)

[@xxxaslhrmln]

nice! really love this content pls do more on design documentation:) also I wanna know how you set your goals what type of goals a product designer need. Thanks for great videos!

[@femkedesign]

Will do! Are you talking about project goals or personal goals?

[@xxxaslhrmln]

@@femkedesign Personal goals 🤩

[@dubella1164]

great stuff and thanks for sharing this❤

[@femkedesign]

You are so welcome

[@yohanesericsuryawijaya4509]

This helped a lot thank you

[@femkedesign]

Glad to hear!

[@gijoe196]

Hi Femke. Nice video covering your the design process. How do you manage an NDA to present your internal design information? I'm updating my portfolio and I don't know how to tackle this. I'm having a bit of a blocker because of that. Thanks for your insights.

[@princhipehdesigns5922]

Great presentation, learnt a lot from this as the only designer in my company. Will be happy if you can share a video on the Principles. Can't wait for the next part? 😀

[@femkedesign]

Thank you!

[@ringtone6187]

Thank you for sharing

[@femkedesign]

My pleasure!

[@gaju1981]

great video! what type of research/tools did your team use to find pain points in this case? thank you

[@femkedesign]

Nothing formal - we looked at data, customer support tix and chatted internally to find pain points from other designers/engineers using the system.

[@ChamindaJ]

Thanks for sharing the case study. I like how you document the pain points and needs. Did the business explicitly articulated the needs or you came up needs based on pain points? I like to learn bit more about the Principals so I am looking forward to a video. Did IT business analysts at Wealth Simple played a role in the project other than 4 people you have recognized at the beginning?

[@femkedesign]

We as a team gathered insights internally and defined the business pain points. We don't have IT business analysts so no, we didn't have that role on the team.

[@hakeemadjei2035]

This is so cool

[@femkedesign]

Thanks!

[@haoyuntang8411]

Thanks for sharing! Really helpful. One quick question is your company’s design system build based on framework? Do I need to highlight in slides? Thx

[@femkedesign]

Not sure I understand the question - what are you referring to when you mention 'framework' ?

[@haoyuntang8411]

@@femkedesign our company design system built based on react and angular code frameworks. So when I started to build components there were lot of collaboration with developers. Do you think need to highlight those in slides?

[@vincychen1114]

Hey Femke, thank you very much of your vedio it helps a lot. Wondering is it possible to walk through your playbook sometimes? think it would be very useful:)

[@femkedesign]

I'll keep it in mind! :)

[@adoreos]

Hey Femke, what is that magic browser that you are using?

[@Nicole-ze4vc]

Amazing content! Thanks so giving such an in-depth view. My maybe silly Q is: where do you get the information regarding business pain points? Is that coming from PM when they propose the project, or connecting with analysts to get the hard numbers? This tends to be the gap area in my own case studies 😅

[@femkedesign]

A bit of both ;)

[@shiznottle123]

Hey Femke, great video! I noticed in your slide presentation that you added some illustrations. Are those company assets or things you made yourself? And if so, what tool(s) did you use to create them? Have other members on your team adopted a similar presentation look and feel or do they have their own style?

[@femkedesign]

They were from a file I got from the Figma community. It's something I kind of adopted as my own style :)

[@LorettaBangBang]

Pleeease create a video on the creation of principles!

[@taniasharma]

Do you have an auditing template that you re-use for projects/products? I'd love to implement more UX focused practices at my start-up. Great video btw!

[@femkedesign]

Not at the moment but thanks for the idea!

[@frankvasquez4827]

Woow! This is amazing 🤩. I would love if my company allowed me to publicly show my work like you do 🙏. But thanks anyway because that's how er learn!

[@femkedesign]

You're welcome!!

[@dhyanimation]

Gold! - Thanks for sharing this- as a lead this really helps in developing tactics for my team. Also, how do you go about creating product principles? - I assume its a group activity along with PMs

[@femkedesign]

Will be sharing that process in another video :)

[@parisahoseini2466]

Well done Femke! it was awesome. Could you give me some advice about how to write this play book? or some resources that I can follow Many thanks

[@femkedesign]

I'll be covering that in my upcoming course! You can join the waitlist for it here: airtable.com/shromw20hDOiouHyB

[@naumankhokhar6471]

Oh Femke!!! Kudos girl! To be a great experience designer, you got to be a great human being and you're an amazing and empathetic human being! Thanks for great content. what is the jtbd of playbook? I want to know the thought process behind it? also, at what use case scenarios it can be built?

[@femkedesign]

The playbook was basically a set of guidelines around messaging for internal teams to use so that they could get started with creating their own messages.

[@naumankhokhar6471]

@@femkedesign oh alright.. thanks much.

[@manum1819]

how much time did you and your team took to finish this?

[@Farrahyousefi]

it was great, but how do you measure impression rate?

[@femkedesign]

Technically? The engineer I was working with set that up so I wasn't responsible for the technical side of capturing metrics.

[@akshatbhatnagar3435]

So do these features come under messaging or Alerts and notifications. Do wealthsimple puts this information under Mesaaging category?

[@femkedesign]

We had it under Messaging. Notifications also sat within messaging but was not included in this project I shared.

[@chelseanick]

This is such great insight! Thank you! Did any brand designers take part in this process? (Assuming you have a separate sort of brand/marketing design team of sorts). Curious how you work/connect/check in with brand on large projects like this (if at all). I work at a small startup as the brand/marketing design lead, and we’re starting to figure out how/when to involve me on product design initiatives.

[@femkedesign]

Yes! I had a workshop with some of the brand team, specifically on the modals and also the marketing cards to ensure that we were carrying the brand through appropriately. This was lead by me in the exploration phase of my process.

[@chelseanick]

@@femkedesign Thanks for the reply. That's very interesting! Right now I'm kind of being brought in at the end to do a brand check. It would be nice to have that kind of discussion earlier in the process like you did.

[@chelseapdxo]

Hello Femke! Im curious to what kind of research you did to uncover these painpoints :-)

[@chelseapdxo]

Also a video about you diving into how you come up with design principles would be great!

[@femkedesign]

I'm address principles in my online course :)

[@MOHAMEDMAHMOUDDesigner]

Hi femke