Salvaging work completed by the previous designers, a separate agency attempt, and Vodafone’s current WS2 design system, along with the existing portal, was a difficult task attempting to optimise / merge multiple visual patterns into one.

Whilst design was taking place, it was necessary to record design patterns into a progressive style guide. The intention was for this design system to be the standard for all future IoT applications, so users only have to learn our system and patterns once.

We adhered to Vodafone’s consumer style guide and core UX principles, but due to the consumer guide being limited when advising on heavy data visualisation, we were given freedom to modify and explore new patterns and components. Accessibility criteria, typography, interaction, layout and grid were altered for best practice which would ultimately benefit the target users.

When setting up to build the design system I decided to start from scratch. I didn’t want to adopt any of the debt that the previous attempt, and Vodafone’s other web / app systems had accumulated and choose to build something that could be flexible and stable for future IoT products.

We allowed data to drive our design decisions. At most stages of the project we were measuring how well the service was working for our users. Prototype testing with current users, both expert and novice, in turn gave us valuable in-sight and feedback. These sessions helped find issues and identified potential problems, but also helped validate assumptions and support various scenarios that were raised as potential improvements.