Design at Scale 2021- Achieving Balanced Design Consistency (Prerna Makanawala)

—> Hello everyone, I’m currently at Palo Atlo Networks, leading the UX design and engineering team there

 

—> This talk is about design consistency. Everyone knows about it, but in company where there are larger number of products, it’s a challenge
  • It’s even more challenging with acquisition and acquired products
—> Had to focus on consistency while working in a previous role at SAP.  This involved questions like
  • How to approach consistency?
  • How to achieve balance between different design systems?
  • How to make recent acquisitions feel like they belong to same company?

—> Mergers and acquisitions are the norm in the current business environment.

 

—> Since 2000, there have been 790k global transactions, valued over 57 trillion dollars

 

—> Even in the pandemic there were 45k transactions, valued at 3.8 trillion dollars

 

—>  The M&A environment involves growing company revenue and market share as a company strategy, to help gain access to talent and customers
  • SAP had done 72 acquisitions over the course of its history
  • Palo Alto Networks has done 16 within past few years
—> Any acquired company must align with all impacts of business
  • But in many cases, things don’t go smoothly, as people have fear of unknown and delay their decision making
  • Key people often end up leaving the acquired company, due to a loss of control of their product
—> With design, we need to align the experience between the parent and acquired companies

 

—> Most companies have a centralized/decentralized/hybrid design environment

 

—> Centralized environment is easier to align product design, while in a decentralized environment , each team happy to do their own things

 

—> Hybrid model has central  actor to keep things in check, and make sure things are aligned, but there is more independence within the sub-components of the design environment

 

 

—> So what are the typical challenges?
  • Identify what needs to be solved, not “how” it’s going to be solved.
—> The challenge with a centralized environment is that product teams are working on deliverables and vision, but don’t have time/resources to see what other products are doing

 

—> Many products may have their own design system, resulting in different experiences across products

 

—> To make the pitch to leadership: Compile screenshots of all company products on one slide and show this to stakeholders and leaders, to show the impact of these how products don’t appear to fall under one company

 

—> Stress the need for cross-system coherence

 

 

—> Consistency is a key principle in design and in life
  • To accomplish something, you need consistency
—> Consistency means less training, customer support calls, and ideally more users using the product

 

—> The desire for consistency is a key reason why there is such a rise in design systems in the past few years

 

—> But once we have decided on the need for consistency, how much consistency do we need?
  • Design leaders can try to align everything, but the product could become too cookie-cutter, diminishing the product experience
    • See the example of CRM systems and HR systems having different functions and users
—> Full consistency is hard to achieve, and people are setting themselves up for failure if they to strive towards it

 

—> 30-40% consistency is the ideal mix, as it allows flexibility for custom product development

 

—> The goal is to find elements and interactions that need to be consistent across all products, and get group consensus on a common design

 

 

—> Then one can create a design program, outlining the how, what, when of which design elements need to be consistent

 

—> Build design circle team to understand product needs and point of view, and focus on the scope  to understand what needs to be done, and what doesn’t need to be done
  • Example include UI elements, typography, and interaction flows
—> Once you identify scope, create a process for how everyone will work
  • Create network groups, where designer from each product teams work collaboratively and come up with decision that works for all
—> Then create a roadmap to outline what needs to be delivered, each month/quarter/time-frame
  • Provide quarterly updates to leadership
  • Don’t just focus on finalizing designs before delivering to engineering
  • Promote and share the plan with everyone, from product management to engineering

 

—> Be aware of strategic, organizational, and cultural differences
  • Can face one or all of these in environment (i.e. a team in a completely different country/ organizational re-orgs)
  • Be aware and be able pivot the project to make sure it works in those situations
—> Approach with a service model
  • Collaboration versus command-control
  • Focus on service leadership
—> Focus not just on design, but implementation

 

—> To show this in action, see the example of the color network groups in Palo Alto Networks
  • People shared needs and requirements
  • Combined all color palettes into one slide
—> Each column represented key colors from different products, ranging from success, to warnings
  • Buttons looked similar, but were not quite the same
—> Different activities were done to narrow down the color scheme to 14 pallets, and then into one color palette that would work for all teams

 

—> Collected screenshots form all products, and asked teams to research what palette would apply for all products
  • The team reviewed Palo Alto’s brand, competitors, and accessibility requirements
—> People shared their preferences, the group voted, and a winning color palette was created

 

 

—> See the above example of a finalized color palette for links, navigation, error, warnings, background, foreground and similarly running all network groups with other topics

 

—> Just aligning a few key colors starts making a difference, and creating a cohesive experience.
  • Still, many improvements remained
—> Showing before/after is important to reinforce importance of consistency, and making sure leaders see the change that was made

 

—> By tackling for one problem, the process solved other integration issues:
  • Breaking down silos between the design teams
  • Products started looking like they belong to the same company
  • Started forming a common design system
  • Helped build sense of a design community within the company

 

—> In short, the main takeaways from the process are as follows:
  • Be the role of a mediator, objective and fair.
  • Follow a Service model, to ensure win-win situation for all
  • Create a plan and communicate with all, not just design leads and designers. Make sure all stakeholders are aligned
  • Understand and listen. The process should be collaborative
    • Don’t alienate minority teams, and understand compromises that need to be made
  • Human capital and design talent is the most powerful asset
    • It needs to be empowered

 

Q&A

 

  1. Comment:  We have moved from the use of the word “consistency,” as it fills too many folks with fear of cookie-cutter-ness… and instead use the word “continuity.” — thoughts/reactions?

 

—> “Continuity” works great, as other companies use like coherence. So long as goal is reached, call it what you want

 

2. Glad to hear about cultural differences! I guess the question is: how can we balance specific differences in cultures/user contexts when they’re not just role or geographical?

 

—> Cultural differences come from company culture, and we need HR to make sure there is a common culture

 

—> Acquisition team takes time, and culture changes for the parent company tend to move slowly
  • Cautious and needs to be aware of that
—> Need flexible working style for certain teams

 

—> In general, come up with strategies and ways to achieve a common goal

 

3. Comment: It might be interesting to think about how consistency becomes a problem when it closes the door on innovation — thoughts/reactions?

 

—> This is why 100% consistency is not needed

 

—> Instead, identify the minimum consistency needed.
  • Innovation will bring inconsistency, so long as it adds more value to product, users, and customers

4. How do you get people who are wedded to their design system adopt a new one?

 

—> This is very challenging. Slow and steady process. Focus on mindset change to recognize people as part of a larger company

 

—> Need to see beyond product, and think how you can achieve a thing for a larger company, and not separate products

 

—> Takes time and effort to change the underlying mindset

 

5. Regarding the business value, how do you measure success and show this value back to the rest of the company (aside from the screenshots)

 

—> Track lot of things. Make sure implementation is tracked and shared with everyone, to make sure progression is visible

 

—> Track adoption to see how things are adopted

 

—> Emphasize it take a lot of effort to work without a common design, as there can be constant rework of the designs to make sure they are consistent
  • Be willing to get creative in demonstrating cost savings without a common design

 

6. How are tracking and reporting on the success of a design system? This is really about tying ROI to design at scale.

—> Early on in doing this

 

—> Eager to hear ideas
  • Hard to show product leadership and value of design to companies
  • This is changing, since design is in a better space relative to 20 years ago, but working to define this further in the future

 

7. Do you have any comments about approaching an acquisition alignment process for a new acquisition after you have gone through this with the rest of the product portfolio?

 

—> You will need to put together an onboarding process for new companies that are acquired

 

8. Can you talk more about how you have you gotten people outside design engaged and maybe challenges?

 

—> Lot of repetitive talk with heads of products, who are often founders of companies
  • Talking with them regularly and showing to them the importance of design and what they are doing
  • Product Management will decide what goes into the backlog and different levels of people
  • Contacting PMs and making sure they are addressing the back-log commitments
  • Communication is key

 

—> Allow a measure of flexibility
  • So long as things are moving in the right direction, things
—> Do what you say you would do, is key