Intuit Design

I joined this amazing company and design organization in September 2019 to build the team that would mature and scale the Intuit Design System, IDS. IDS is a critical part of the Intuit platform, serving as the horizontal connective tissue between our products, and the deeper connective tissue that connects our tech stack and services to the experiences that help our customers thrive.

The aim was to converge our disparate product design systems into a single, Intuit-wide design system housing every product design theme, so that:

1) Products coexist and each one benefits from what the others invent.

2) Customers feel familiarity and continuity as they move from one product or platform to another, and

3) Speed to benefit is guaranteed for their employee community of builders (with designers and developers reusing proven components and swiftly ship new features).

An effective way to accelerate design work is by providing teams with a library of reusable components. For those libraries to be used rather than admired, they have to be easy to find, easy to move through, and simple to implement and consume.

The platform you use to host your component libraries can also create shared accountability, promote collaboration, and enable lockstep innovation. That is, if the platform gives everyone a line of sight to the good work being done across it. Cross-platform transparency + easy components + a clear vision = product velocity. For the math-brained, think of “Design velocity” with the component library platform as a force multiplier. In our case, that’s Figma.

Upon joining Intuit, I advocated for a full design team shift to Figma as our design tool solution. I joined a leadership council to evaluate Figma’s features and decide whether it fit the Intuit design process well enough to become the standard tool across the organization.

Here’s how we looked at our design org opportunities with this potential shift.

“Does it...”

· Improve real-time collaboration within segments, across projects, across business units, and with cross-functional partners?

· Provide a more reliable source of truth for designers as they design?

· Simplify and bring efficiencies in maintaining external design systems sites?

· Contribute to a collaborative design culture?

· Improve cohesion, accelerate learning, and reduce confusion and duplication of work?

· Simplify SSO effort for SAAS tools?

· Reduce cost by eliminating potentially duplicative design tools?

· Avoid design tools fragmentation?

Here’s a high-level view of our opportunity for tools convergence:

And, finally, how we looked at our success criteria for our Figma evaluation:

Large files: Satisfaction with handling large files (no broken links, lag, load times, etc.)

Efficiency: Workflow efficiency - saving time, reducing the number of steps

Quality: Minimum to zero errors during file sharing and software translation

Conversion: Adoption rate within design teams and with cross-functional partners

Specs: Accuracy of spec delivery to developers and version control; reduced number of errors and discrepancies

Integration: Scalable integration with existing partner tools and processes (brand, marketing, content, agencies, PD, etc.)

Design library management: Comparable or noticeable improvement to existing tool for design system and library management (Sketch, Lingo, Zeplin vs. Figma)

Process: Does this let business units share one Intuit design process, a yet-to-be-developed process covering creative exploration, collaboration, quality and handoff?

Cost: Cost/benefit analysis over other tools and possible savings for the future

TL;DR: Figma for the win.

My IDS team recently ratified a platform-wide set of durable components with the aim of giving our products a shared “soul” that will provide beautiful continuity across all Intuit products. In turn, giving our customers familiarity with web, native, and desktop experiences.

You can read the full write-up on our Durable/Adaptable framework here.

As a design leader at Intuit I share in the responsibility for the creative culture. By working closely with the people who care most about it, I’ve been able to plant seeds for measurable grassroots efforts to take hold. Recruiting, retention and reputation metrics are the foundation of the measurement framework I’ve set up for accountability, and some of the tactics fueling our efforts include:

The Design Bar. I gathered Intuit’s top craftspeople to raise our quality bar through creative direction and healthy critique sessions. The Design Bar team puts our best visual, motion, UX and event work, plus design narratives, out on Dribbble, Medium, and LinkedIn.

Visual Design lunch and learn. Bringing outside energy in: art, design, operations and leadership expertise from around the world, once a month. These monthly sessions have helped bring fresh perspectives and voices to our creative community while signaling to those outside our walls that we are permeable to authentic voices from the people our products serve.

Supercharge. A twice-a-year venue that brings our creative voices together to push one another toward the best work of our careers. Our Supercharge events will feature product walkthroughs, coaching sessions, craft workshops, and collaborative activities to reinforce the One Intuit design team vibe and ensure cross-pollination is maintained across our often siloed business units.