Design in public - eBay's Playbook
A refreshed Design System powering our flagship consumer app release in 4 months
Very aggressive timeline: Kick off Oct 2023 to Public release Jan 25, 2024
Only possible because of the solid Design System foundation we carefully built over years and the full focus of our team to maintain quality in the accelerated schedule
The Challenge
Make big system changes an insane deadline
A refreshed Design System powering our flagship consumer app release in 4 months
Very aggressive timeline: Kick off Oct 2023 to Public release Jan 25, 2024
Only possible because of the solid Design System foundation we carefully built over years and the full focus of our team to maintain quality in the accelerated schedule
Built on a strong foundation
We leveraged ou
My part
We divided up the work and I lead key areas of the project
I updated key components like buttons, avatars, alerts, and form elements
I added support for variables and variant properties
I re-wrote design guidelines for key components
I worked 1:1 with native engineers to QA each update
I helped support training and adoption of the library by the design org
Reflections
Mission Possible
It took a team effort
We had to make big priority decisions to limit scope
We all had to pause other projects to focus
But we did it! Delivered the Figma library update in just 3 weeks
Added guidelines and supported engineering for following 2 weeks
Fastest system iteration in PP history :)
Next time?
I wouldn’t recommend this strategy in the future, yes our team met the deadline, but we also set an expectation that it was wise to rush system work that should be done with care not speed. We had to make compromises that will come back to bite us later.
Better project planning could have allowed us to make better decisions and release the DS on a phased rollout.
Let's connect :)
I can share more about this project when we meet.
