Andela- Victoria Flashcards
Tell me about yourself?
I started my career in graphic design after graduating college in visual communication.
And after some time, I was more drawn to UI design and got my first opportunity at an early stage startup called Yourder. where i met talal. Which was a restaurant table ordering system.(far ahead of its time, cause now its everywhere) where I worked alongside a UX designer for the first time, and just learned about this multidisciplinary field in design. And I was adamant that I’ll become a UX/UI designer.
So I started my UX education with Interaction Design Foundation.
And got my first job as a UX/UI designer with another early stage startup called OYA.
OYA is an iOS mobile app that brings women entrepreneurs and customers who want to support WOB together to support each other.
And a few months after covid broke out, I decided to further educate myself in UX design so I enrolled myself in a Bootcamp with CareerFoundry.
and when I completed my certificate, I started freelancing and it’s been a year and a half now. I’m currently at David’s bridal as a UX/UI designer working on their new event planning website called Pearl as well as leading and maintaining their design system.
What is your experience working with Design Systems?
I have past experience maintaining design systems and style guides, but its my first time leading one at David’s Bridal for Pearl.
Can you walk me through your design system?
I would actually love to show you our design system and walk you through the before and afters, how I implemented atomic design, etc.
When I started here in March, I only had a UI kit derived
from David’s Bridals Style guide to work with.
So my workflow felt very disorganized and slow because not only
was the UI kit not structured well, it also didn’t have
a lot of the components that were being reused in the prototype.
And a lot of the components also didn’t utilize auto layout, main components and its variants.
I’ve created an extensive design system compared to what we had, it’s still in progress.
I used Brad Frost’s Atomic Design guideline to organize our design system.
So we have our atoms, molecules, and organisms.
We have our Atoms here, the basic building blocks; our color palette, typography, grid, etc.
Then we have our molecules which are groups of atoms that work together to form a functional unit that performs a specific action.
Then we have our organisms which are groups of molecules that create more complex UI components.
And as you can see there’s still a lot to be done.
I still have to create templates and create documentation for designers and developers.
thats on all the to do list
What is your design process?
so first I identify what should be created or optimized.
I look through all the finalized prototypes, take screenshots, make notes// to create a UI inventory.
Then once the audit is complete, I would do research on the latest best practices and apply it to create a design system on Figma, applying functionalities such as auto layout, main components, variants, instances, constraints, styles, etc.
and then I would create documentation for designers and developers. Which will have the guidelines, principles, design system maintenance, developer’s hand-off, flow implementation, etc.
How do you think a design system will help designers and developers?
For designers, I think the most useful part about having a design system is how quickly you can mock up a series of prototypes with UI components already made. You can focus on your creativity. It’s save a lot of time.
For developers, you can copy and paste pre-tested code snippets which I’m sure also saves a lot of time.
It creates a consistent brand identity and a cohesive experience for the end-users.
How do you work with stakeholders?
Did you have to convince any stakeholders?
The stakeholders I work with are developers, another ux/ui designer, chief design officer, and a graphic designer.
We communicate a lot on slack, we’ll jump on a huddle for any questions that need urgent answers.
We have set meetings every week.
So I had the sell the idea of starting a design system
With my lead which is the chief design officer.
Because its a time-consuimg project she didn’t
Want me to focus on it because I was hired to design the actual website.
But as a designer, I knew if there was a strong design system set, our workflow will be much quicker, we can also focus more on being creative by designing mutiple layouts instead of focusing on re creating each component.
So in my free time, I started building one
And showed it to her once I had every component we already finalized in it and just walked her through it. and she was all for it afterward.
Why do you want to work for Andela.
So first I’ll mention Talal. I’ve been with him when he worked in his past few jobs and I’ve never seen him more happier than he is at Andela. He truly never needs to vent about work anymore. He said that the team is very passionate about what they do and you can really feel it. If there’s something you worked on that the team didn’t agree with they’ll offer you constructive criticism but also appreciate that you put in the hard work. and He really likes you, he says you guys have very genuine conversations and he feels like you really do care about him and his growth as a designer.
I’ve never taken interest in applying for the same company Talal works at but just hearing about his project and team members really made me jump at this opportunity.
and I met with Chris and Julian and I’ve had a great conversation with them. Chris exudes passion, he really loves what he does. and Julian as well. he was very honest about his flaws and asked me questions in a very thoughtful way. I really liked them both.
I also checked out Andela’s about us section. and its a very forward-thinking company.
Two things that really stood out to me.
Andela Learning Community (ALC)
I really value continuous learning and having a growth mindset.
and to have launched an all-female cohort of engineers to increase female representation in tech
I mean that’s so cool.
Do you have any questions for me?
- As a designer, what do you feel Andela’s design system is lacking or needs improvement on?
- What would your expectations for me be in the first 90 days in this position?
Please let me know if you need any other information.
It was nice chatting with you.
Thank you so much again, for your time.
Why do you want to be a design systems designer
I want to have a positive impact on design and i think design systems designer is a great way to do that. because I want to help steer designers in the right direction in terms of design habits, ux/ui best practices, workflow process, etc.
