The NCR design system aimed to enhance UI consistency and quality, eliminate redundancy, and achieve unified product offerings across the NCR ecosystem through a meticulously curated system of UX patterns, guidelines, components, and features.
2016 - 2020
Hospitality, Retail, Financial, Platform
Product Director
Web, Mobile, ATM, Kiosk, POS, SCO
The company’s products were designed in isolation, lacking a cohesive design strategy, which resulted in inconsistent user and brand experiences. This fragmented approach overlooked the user’s needs, leading to a product suite that failed to meet their expectations. The absence of a unified design was not only detrimental to brand identity but also impacted usability, revealing a clear need for a centralized, user-focused design system.
We hypothesized that a centralized design system could be the key to overcoming the fragmented user and visual experiences scattered across our product landscape. By creating a unified framework grounded in shared principles, best practices, and adaptable guidelines, we aimed to empower designers and developers to produce cohesive solutions. This strategic approach would not only ensure consistency but also evolve with user needs and industry standards, ultimately bridging the gap between disjointed products.
My Role as Director & Multi-Disciplinary Designer:
As Director of the NCR Design System, I took on multiple roles throughout the project—acting as a Front-End Developer (FED), UX/UI Designer, Product Manager, Researcher, Mentor, and design advocate. This multifaceted role allowed me to advance the design system while ensuring all app aspects aligned with user needs and business goals.
Team Collaboration & Leadership:
I led a diverse, cross-functional team of designers, engineers, and stakeholders, fostering an environment where design thinking thrived, and team members felt empowered. By facilitating workshops, critiques, and feedback loops, I ensured our team stayed focused and adaptable.
Design Strategy & Vision:
I was crucial in developing the design system and shaping UX/UI strategy. From creating modular components to defining navigation patterns and visual language, I crafted a cohesive, scalable design experience to support product growth and user needs.
The NUI Design System transformed design and development across hundreds of applications, delivering significant improvements in speed, quality, and consistency:
Our discovery process involved reviewing existing user feedback, analytics, and client requests. Additionally, we conducted audits and rapid research to identify emerging business needs, client goals, and user requirements.
To create our design system, we initially performed product audits on our flagship offerings to gain insight into the existing landscape and create an inventory of elements and components. This formed the basis of the first iteration of the system. As we expanded the system, we sought input from product designers, but encountered obstacles in obtaining their contributions. To overcome these hurdles, we took a proactive approach in generating ideas for the system's components and patterns.
To ensure a holistic approach, we sought input from the UX Design Team, who were the primary users of the system, to maintain a broader perspective. However, as the team expanded and became more dispersed, obtaining feedback became increasingly challenging. To overcome this obstacle, we employed diverse methods, such as interviews, surveys, and feedback forms, to gather relevant information. This approach helped us develop informed roadmaps, address concerns, and prioritize our efforts.
Our discovery process involved reviewing existing user feedback, analytics, and client requests. Additionally, we conducted audits and rapid research to identify emerging business needs, client goals, and user requirements.
To ensure a holistic approach, we sought input from the UX Design Team, who were the primary users of the system, to maintain a broader perspective. However, as the team expanded and became more dispersed, obtaining feedback became increasingly challenging. To overcome this obstacle, we employed diverse methods, such as interviews, surveys, and feedback forms, to gather relevant information. This approach helped us develop informed roadmaps, address concerns, and prioritize our efforts.
We established a clear engagement model that we published to enable teams to collaborate effectively with us. Additionally, we designed an internal process flow to provide transparency and clarity on our approach to working with external partners.
Our goal was to create comprehensive resources for the product teams at NCR, so we focused on internal tools. Our aim was to provide a solid foundation with core building blocks for success, not constrict the team's creativity.
The design system included visual and interaction guidelines focusing on high-level concepts, component usage, and LOB/tech-specific implementations. Creating them required time, expertise, and strong design opinions, so we drew on ideas and best practices from product designers and other systems.
Components are the fundamental building blocks of an application, such as buttons, cards, tables, and filters, and are the most debated aspect of a design system. To streamline development, our system included detailed component designs, documentation, and code for easy implementation by development teams. We consistently updated the code base to ensure products stayed current with the latest design styles.
The Documentation Site serves as the hub of our design system, centralizing all tools and guidance. It provides a single source of truth, granting users access to the latest updates, resource links, and a channel for providing feedback.
Patterns are pre-designed solutions to the most frequent design problems. Our layout templates acted as a foundation for teams, reducing effort and ensuring consistency across products.
Read my detailed write up about my time leading the NCR Design System
View the Case study