At A Glance
001
Overview
My Role
User Experience Designer
During my Fall co-op, I had a chance to work with Nokia’s Design System Team within the Cloud Network Services Business group. This team was responsible for the Nokia-wide design system and I got to lead, enhance and make an impact on the workflow of designers and developers across the company who were spread across Canada, USA, Finland, Portugal, and India.
It was an incredible experience working with managers and team leads that supported my learning and empowered my me by letting me take full ownership of my projects. I was able to conduct user research and recommend changes at the organizational level. Additionally, I was also selected to be a Nokia Student Ambassador for the fall where I was able to create conducive environments to network and learn for the co-op and new grad cohort of Nokia which comprised of over 250 students.
While the contents of my work are under NDA, this case study highlights the main scope of work and outcomes. If you’d like to dive deeper - email me!
Skills
User interviews, design research, survey design, , research analysis and recommendations, created the foundational components, patterns, content and guidance for the Nokia-wide Design system, prototyping, UI Design
Timeline
September 2023 to December 2023
Tools
Figma, Miro, Supernova, Storyboard, JIRA
Key Responsibilities
002
An overview of my core responsibilities over 4 months as as follows:
01
Product Design
I contributed to all parts of the product design lifecycle which included spearheading an application design process right from research to user flow to interaction design within the first 4 weeks!
02
Design System Restructure
I restructured the design system (driven by design research and usability tests) to make the lives of designers, developers and product owners, across Nokia, easier.
03
User Research and Usability Testing
Conducted extensive internal user research and design research to ensure my results were backed by data and in line with the industry’s best practices.
04
Charts Library Visual Consistency
A rare attribute of the Nokia Design System is that it offer extensive libraries for charts and maps. I analyzed, research and improved the visual consistency of the components in the chart library.
05
Component creation, ad-hoc bug fixes
To ensure the design system remains robust and accessible, I tackled ad-hoc bugs reported by designers and developers and fixed over 15 bugs (identified 5 of them myself) and created 8 new components.
06
Nokia Student Ambassador-ship
I was selected to be 1 of 5 Student Ambassador from a cohort of 250+ students. I initiated, organized and conducted events to encourage networking, learning and worked towards created a meaningful term for all the students interning with Nokia last fall!
Project Highlight
002
My manager Ms. Glenda Helmer and my team lead, Mr. Ian Murchison allowed me to pick and choose my projects right from the start to allow me to grow in the directions I’d like.
Outside of daily bug fixes and component upgrades, my core projects were as follows:
01
Application Design for HelpCenter
02
Restructure of the Design Library
01. HelpCenter for the Nokia Orchestration Center
43
Screens
10
Unique Components
06
User flows
04
Weeks
Problem
The engineering and systems expert team behind the Nokia Orchestration Center, located in Finland, wanted to build an internal support and technical documentation tool that was web-based and allowed employees to quickly navigate and find solutions to their queries.
Testing reported that users had trouble wayfinding through copious amounts of technical documentation.
Solution
Thorough design research and benchmarking along with tight feedback loops with the development and SME team lead to a user interface that was:
Clear, easy to navigate and intuitive.
Process Outline
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Context Setting
User Research
Design Research & Benchmarking
Designing & Prototyping
Stakeholder Validation
& Feedback
🎉
Outcome
After thorough research, several versions and lots of very agile feedback loops, we went from multiple sections of versioning to our final file →
Since the work is under NDA, I cannot share the final screens or the prototype here but if you’re curious - email me!
02. Design Library Restructure
Problem
Upon conducting user interviews with Developers, meeting with product owners and conducting semi-structured usability tests with designer, I was able to identify several gaps in the the way that the Design System was structure on Figma and the loopholes in it’s documentation on Supernova.
Developers found the Component Library on Figma difficult to navigate
Designers and developers were lost about their source of truth for design system documentation
Solution
I evaluated popular design systems and dived deep into streamlining hand-off workflows. This lead me to explore Figma’s dev mode, accessible hand-off guidelines, and industry best practices. I thus restructured the library (and process) as follows:
Each component page of Figma was restructured, labelled and organized based on the prioritization of main and nested elements.
The updated documentation pages for each component page were linked in the Figma library and additional documentation was added in places where it was missing.
A new page was added to keep track of release notes to make it easier for designers and developers to track updates.
Wrote comprehensive guides for designers and developers to establish baseline of usage and hand-off for the library and documentation
Process Outline
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Context Setting
User Research
Design Research & Benchmarking
Branching out and pilot testing
Feedback and
publishing 🎉🙌🥳
🎉
Outcome
Over 2 weeks of rigorous research and testing loops, I was able to:
Identify inconsistencies in the existing documentation
Explore various plugins on Figma that can aid designers with design system documentation
Gained a deep understanding of Figma’s dev mode (and how it can be emulated within budgetary constraints!)
Awarded a structure that followed logical order to the Design System
Since the work is under NDA and the Nokia Design System is not public (yet 👀) I cannot share the final screens or the prototype here but if you’re curious - email me!
Learning Reflections
003
01
To hit the ground running
My co-op started on September 5th and I was on the Application Design project on September 7, with my (ever-so-supportive) UX Manager and senior developers and SME’s who I was leading meetings for!
02
Iterate, explore and then explore some more
My team lead and the entire teams infrastructure was incredible supportive of research and taking design decisions based on exploration. They encouraged me to strive for innovation!
03
Leading meetings with interdisciplinary stakeholders from diverse linguistic backgrounds
A lot of the senior staff was based out of Finland and Portugal which helped me finetune my communication skills as led them through walkthroughs and feedback cycles.
