40 different versions of the green SJ button. That was just one of the challenges for the railway giant before the design system was put in place. Today, the graphic design is consistent across all channels, and UX designers and developers can spend more time on things that benefit users and the business.
Client: SJ
We worked with: Service Design, UX Design, Design System
Today, almost all of SJ’s sales occur in digital channels. It’s a complex business with many systems and tools that need to work together. When Antrop was brought in to lead the work on the design system, many of the systems also needed to be rebuilt. At that time, SJ had just started using common components that could be reused across team and customer workflows, but there was a lack of governance and many components differed in development versus design. The first challenge, therefore, was to regain ownership, streamline, and address the design debt for what had already been developed. Working on a long-term vision needed to happen in parallel with daily support of multiple development teams.
Before formulating the strategy, it was important to find out what SJ wanted with the design system and what the development teams’ needs were. To get answers, Antrop conducted interviews about SJ’s existing component library and processes. A clear deficiency was that different components were developed by different teams. This meant that many employees spent a lot of time reinventing the wheel over and over, resulting in a disjointed outcome. The solution was to formulate a long-term vision for the design system as a product and determine working methods, roles, and responsibilities to achieve it.
Insights into what needed to change resulted in both a new technical platform and the addition of a product owner for the design system. Recognizing the design system as an independent product marked a significant shift, especially crucial for ongoing development in a fast-evolving environment. The design system of SJ has already enabled quicker testing and simpler adaptation of components to meet accessibility standards, yet this is just the beginning.
Clear routines and guidelines needed to be developed in parallel with the design system. Now, new components are created centrally and can then be used by all teams separately. There is a common place for version control so that everyone can see changes per component. This means that the development organization spends less time on interface details and can focus more on SJ’s goals. Now, two years later, up to 20 different systems are using the design system and benefiting from the continuous improvements being made.
— ”Over the two years that we have worked with the design system, we have gradually moved towards the vision we developed at the beginning,” says Erik Markensten, Head of Design at Antrop.
