Expedia Group, 2021 - 2023Scaling a system.
Context / Expedia Group, a leading global travel platform, was undergoing an unprecedented re-org aimed at consolidating all brands, eliminating duplication, and reducing costs. For Design System teams, this meant centralising all systems into a single platform model.
Objective & ApproachDevelop and scale our Design Systems to boost efficiency and increase adoption across Expedia Group products, teams, and brands.
My role / Lead Designer, transitioned from Hotels.com and joined the newly formed Expedia Group Design System team (EGDS).
Utilising designs tokens for multi-brand theming.
With the re-org on the horizon, the Design System community strategised potential pathways for a single platform. We decided to leverage brand Expedia’s Design System (UDS) due to its advanced token setup, which allowed us to map values for brands into various design token levels, preserving their unique look and feel.
Images / Foundation colour ramp, Semantic tokens for action background colour (light and dark mode), Spec for token level mapping on Button component
Evolving component features and standards.
With design tokens established, our focus shifted to auditing other Design Systems at EG, transferring knowledge, and refactoring all UDS components to integrate them. Besides brand theming, these components needed to support features such as accessibility, dark mode, and cross-platform use.
We dubbed this process "graduating" components.
Images / Snapshot of Banner component, token mapping, and documentation
Accelerating enterprise-level adoption.
As graduation progressed, the level of detail and build time required made it clear we wouldn't meet our April 2022 target (it was Nov 2021). To accelerate, we descoped some capabilities short-term. Working in squads, we focused on similar components, making strategic trade-offs and consolidations.
Images / Discovery for consolidating functions between Scrollable and Carousel components, Demo of scrolling and paging behaviours (Prototype↗︎)
Outcome & ImpactWe evolved UDS into EGDS, expanding the array of components and tools while increasing adoption to 1,000+ active users.
Deliverables / Design tokens, Components, Patterns & Templates, Visual language, Prototypes, Documentation & Specs, Governance model, Training resources, Competitive audits, Onboarding, Support
55
🎉 Components graduated with brand theming, accessibility, dark mode, native considerations, and localisation capabilities.
Images / Design System components, Spec for type foundation tokens, Touch target guidance, Localisation graphic, Light and dark mode UI example, Brand theming example for Expedia and Vrbo
“Heeran is one of the most joyful, approachable designers I have ever worked with. I worked with Heeran for 2 years on the Expedia Group enterprise design system team, where he helped craft and build the core foundation from which the entire set of EG brands is built. He has an accessible and inclusive design mindset, and it showed in all of his work. He always asked questions and was a wonderful collaborator.”
Julia Edbrooke
Role at Expedia Group / Sr Accessibility UX Designer & Advocate
Future initiatives for evolution and growth.
With an established user base for EGDS, we began conducting research to identify user needs and outlined our next initiatives and milestones. These included launching an MVP documentation site for customer success, implementing a Tiered Design System model for community contributions, and introducing a unified Design Language (1DL) to align all brands under Expedia Group.
Images / Snapshot of MVP documentation site, Tiered Design System model for local to core, Specs for new theming capabilities, Designs using new themes for richer brand expression
