All new Yale sites use the design system I established
Yale has more than a thousand websites, and now, with its first digital design system, it can keep them all on brand.
Role: Creative Director
I led the team as the Creative Director, working alongside a UI designer and a frontend engineer from my team at Four Kitchens while teaming up with a UX designer and an accessibility expert from Yale.
A design system was born, and it delivered the following:
- A suite of design tokens that define Yale's digital brand and provide flexibility for future digital projects—web, react, iOS, etc.
- A library of adaptable and customizable components is available in their CMS. Each component was thoroughly accessibility tested with automated tooling and direct user testing with people with disabilities.
- A theming system that gives users choices in how their site looks while maintaining Yale's brand. Giving users the ability to choose how their school or department site looks has increased the adoption of Yale's centralized site service.
The biggest challenge for this project was a conflict between our work cultures.
My team is a high-trust environment. We share rough working drafts to get opinions and ensure we're on the right track before we tighten up a deliverable or a document.
Yale is a dot all your i's and cross your t's before sending anything out culture, as befits an institution with a 300-year history.
Once we uncovered and identified this friction, I had my team adapt our working style to accommodate theirs. Behind the scenes, I worked with critical stakeholders to encourage a more open process.
Within a few cycles, we created a hybrid culture that adopted the best of both worlds by sharing drafts one-on-one with Yale people and buttoning them up for group presentations.
