Dell Design System

The Company

Dell Technologies is a renowned name in the field of digital transformation, and is known for providing innovative solutions to businesses and societies across the globe. Dell has a rich history of delivering cutting-edge technology that empowers organizations to optimize their infrastructure, harness the power of data, and enhance their overall productivity.

Working at Dell

We had a balanced team where designers, developers, and product managers work together on the same team. It’s a very product-focused and problem-solving-focused team.

While working for Dell I had the opportunity to collaborate with teams from around the world daily.

  • Contributed to the Dell Design System as a Product Designer

  • Involved in all stages of component development, including research, design, and documentation

  • Considered accessibility, globalization, and developer constraints during design

  • Collaborated closely with accessibility specialists within the organization

  • Utilized various tools to guarantee the accessibility of designs

  • Accounted for the thousands of internal users relying on the designs in their daily tasks when incorporating components into the Dell Design System.

Tooltip Component

We needed a tooltip, two actually -- a Simple tooltip for general use cases and a Data tooltip designed explicitly for data visualization.

I researched other design systems to understand tooltip practices in various industries and compared them to popovers to identify similarities and differences.

Collaboration

Working with the design teams, we had to decide whether a tooltip in a data table was valuable.

I presented specific use cases where a table in a tooltip improved user comprehension and interaction. Presenting practical situations that required a table for effective data communication, made a convincing case for its inclusion.

Touchscreens

I considered both accessibility and touchscreen triggers to ensure proper display on mobile devices.

  • Tooltips triggered by touch on touchscreen devices have a close button option that allows users to tap on it.

  • This feature caused much debate about differentiating between a tooltip and a popover component that always has a close button.

  • We decided that tapping the tooltip would also require tapping to dismiss it.

Dropdown Component

After thoroughly reviewing design systems and use cases, I included single-select, multi-select, and filterable options in the Dropdown Component.

Leveraging existing components, I used the design system to create a dropdown menu. After reviewing it for accessibility, globalization, and developer handoff, we released the new component.

Table Component

For my final project at Dell, I collaborated with another designer, Aileen to create documentation for the table component.

  • After finalizing the designs and documentation, we presented it for the first critique.

  • The revisions included providing descriptions and names for the different types of tables.

  • We created Stickersheets to include all five table size ranges with the three density variants.

Accessibility

We met with the A11Y Accessibility team and discovered that including a tooltip in the header would not comply with accessibility requirements.

  • Usability issues were created by screen readers reading out the tooltip for every column cell.

  • As a result, we removed this feature in subsequent iterations.

Table Anatomy

The responsive design delivers a visually appealing and intuitive interface.

The consistent visual language and adaptive layout ensure usability and readability across different devices and density settings, contributing to Dell's commitment to delivering user-centric digital experiences.

What I Learned

  1. Improved my ability to articulate design decisions, present ideas to stakeholders, and document design.

  2. Collaborated with a global team of product managers, developers, and fellow designers.

  3. Gained experience in all stages of product development, from research and ideation to prototyping and testing.

  4. Experienced working with Agile methodologies, participating in Sprint Reviews, Retrospectives, and Standups.

Outcome

  1. Designed components that were implemented over 10,000 times across various Dell Digital experiences.

  2. Improved design consistency across multiple products, enhancing the overall user experience.

  3. Produced comprehensive documentation to ensure seamless integration across diverse Dell Digital platforms and services.

  4. Contributed to faster release cycles and smoother development processes, resulting in improved productivity for the team.

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