A presentation at Iterable Activate in in San Francisco, CA, USA by Ted Goas
Design Systems for Email: Bring Order to the Chaos
Ted Goas Sr. Product Designer, Stack Overflow @tedgoas
Humble beginnings
2016 4 mil Email sends each week 70+ Categories (when we’re not promoting something)
Email landscape Inconsistent Expensive Broken
What is a design system?
Spotify brand guidelines
Mailchimp patterns
“ A design system is a collection of reusable components, guided by clear standards, that can be assembled together to build any number of applications. Marco Suarez Design consultant Previously at InVision, Etsy, and Mailchimp
Shopify design system
Stack Overflow design system
Photo credit: Matt Artz, unsplash
“ If a design system is treated as a side project, it’ll probably fail. Nathan Curtis Founder and Principal, EightShapes
Making our case Time Money Consistency Education
“ If you allow a small group of employees to build a design system, all these problems go away. It will cost you about X hours a week for Y months. Our sales pitch… basically…
Atlassian design system
“ Another flaw in human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. Kurt Vonnegut
Photo credit: http://i.imgur.com/LPIrHp0.jpg
“ When building design systems, get into habit of documenting early. You’re building a system and that cannot work if the system is you. Karri Saarinen Principal Designer - Airbnb
Tips for writing documentation Document as you go Real time Get an editor Not just words
“ Me: Here’s how I make buttons. COWORKER: Great! Hey does this other, simpler way work too? ME: No of cours… ME: (researches) ME: Actually… yes…
“ One of the biggest impacts is people being able to get further without design help. […] It doesn’t mean you don’t need a designer—it’s just that other team members can get further than they could before. Diana Mounter Design systems manager - Github
Photo credit: rawpixel, unsplash
@tedgoas https://email.geeks.chat/ Thanks!
Most email designers at Activate have a wealth of knowledge in their head. But that’s the problem! It’s in their head, inaccessible to everyone they work with. An email design system educates and empowers everyone on the team - from marketers to developers - to create consistently-designed, properly-rendered email.
In this talk, I’ll share some of the tools you’ll need to create your own email design system: tips on getting executive buy-in, advice on where and how to begin setting it up, and how to prioritize what goes in it. I’ll illustrate it all with examples from our email design system at Stack Overflow, which facilitates over 4 million email sends a week.
The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.
for free. You
can too.