Terra, a shared design system
Workhuman's design system. A colleague and I set its vision and built its base components. A team of more than thirty runs it today.
- Company
- Workhuman
- Sector
- HR software
- My role
- Defined the vision and built the base components
- Used across Workhuman's products
- Maintained today by a team of more than thirty
- Collaboration between more than forty people across design, engineering, product, QA and accessibility
Terra keeps Workhuman’s products consistent, usable and accessible under one design language.
It started as Aurora
Before Terra there was Aurora, an earlier design system that I helped build out alongside my work as a product designer. Aurora won support for the idea of a design system. It was not the right candidate for the whole company.
What I did
A colleague and I defined the vision for Terra and built its base components: the colour system, the grid and the first atoms. I wrote the first usage guidelines for each of them.
I made the case for the new system inside the company, using what Aurora had got wrong, and we won the backing of senior stakeholders.
I also helped set up how the system would be run: a hybrid governance model, community meetings, workshops, dedicated channels and a design peer review process.
What happened
Colleagues took Terra over and built it out from that direction. Adoption and contributions grew quickly once teams could see how to take part, and the system is now maintained by a dedicated team.