Client: The Walt Disney Studio Technology
Background:
The Studio Technology team delivers tech solutions for various lines within Walt Disney Studios—Production, Marketing, Distribution, Operations, Music, Stage Shows, and In-Home Distribution.
Jump to
Product teams lacked consistent design standards, forcing them to rebuild foundational elements for every new product or feature. Inconsistent UI/UX behaviors made applications harder to learn.
This caused substantial expenses in redesigns and refactoring—not to mention the financial cost of creating unreliable user experiences across touchpoints.
Research
Gathering Insights
Immersive Research
To understand project-level pain points, I embedded myself in three teams, attended their sprints, and observed designers and front-end developers in action.
User Interviews
Interviewed a cross-functional group—16 designers, 12 front-end engineers, and 6 product stakeholders—to validate whether a Design System would be adopted and to identify how inconsistent experiences impacted them.
Lead Frontend Developer
Competitive Analysis & Surveys
Surveyed internal teams to understand desirable features and expectations of a Design System.
Feedback revealed:
1. Most teams rely on existing frameworks (Bootstrap, Material Design).
2. A Disney-originated Design System would be welcomed.
3. Both designers and developers would benefit from a unified resource, and many were willing to contribute.
Strategy
What Does Success Looks Like
Experience Vision
Synthesizing insights, user needs, and business goals, we defined our north star: a Design System providing guidelines and assets to streamline production. It would allow teams to create intuitive, efficient, and learnable interfaces across platforms.
Feature Mapping
Held alignment sessions to balance user and business priorities, mapping success metrics and KPIs with the team.
Design
Designing & testing
Low-Fidelity Sketches & Information Architecture
In discovery mode, sketching quickly uncovered navigation and taxonomy issues.
1. Designers and engineers differed in content grouping and naming—solved through: Card sorting (open and closed).
2. Tree testing on interactive prototypes.
Wireframes & Testing
Multiples layouts were created and tested to come up with the template variation that would host the Design Guidelines.
Dedicated Mobile Strategy
Recognizing varied feature needs across contexts, we designed adaptive content structures and interaction models for mobile.
Prototyping & Usability Testing
High-fidelity interactive prototypes allowed rapid feedback loops. We conducted usability studies with six-user groups in Disney’s Interactive Lab—covering navigation and asset usage—and used feedback to refine our iteration.
7 Usability Study Sessions (6 participants each) were conducted in the Disney Interactive Lab. Several designers and developers across Disney were recruited to test multiple facets of the System - from navigation to usage of the assets (downloadable design and code libraries).
Caption: Screenshot of a participant video using eye-tracking testing the interactive prototype.
Results
Bringing it all together
Launching the the design system across the Studios
The First Release
Designing and implementing a design system on a large organization was no easy feat. To provide the best experience and value to our users and convince all the different stakeholders that this was a good investment, we had to jump through several hoops. We kept our eyes on the prize and used data to illustrate how this could be an invaluable tool for the business.
20+
4
90%
2020 Update
By 2020, the system had reached its third iteration, backed by recurring funding and recognized as a critical asset for Studio Technology. Its success also inspired the creation of additional design systems across Disney. I was invited to showcase the work broadly within the company, including internal webinars and a featured presentation at the 2018 Disney UX & Product Design Summit.