Project: Multi-platform, multi-product design system
Product: Cvent Platform
Role: Experience Designer
Year: 2018-2019
Case
The Cvent platform serves event planners, hoteliers, exhibitors, and event attendees through dozens of products that enable amazing events. Cvent covers everything from planning, booking venues, marketing, executing day-of, and analyzing event success afterwards.
Problem
Cvent had 20 years of legacy in-house products and dozens of acquired products, and little cohesion between them. The platform covers many tools for many different users in many different contexts, and the lack of a centralized, thought-through UX and design system made the tools hard to use and hard to manage.
Approach
With guidance from a third party specializing in design systems, we analyzed key shared patterns and went through several rounds of isolated reference design sprints. Our cross-functional sprint team (design+dev) broke down those key patterns into atomic-level components and began the work to build up a new system for the entire platform.
Insights
Given the broad scope of the Cvent platform, we discovered that prescribing full range the entire suite’s needs would be unwise, and instead focused a central core system (Carina), which would serve as a base from which each individual product line could extend.
Solution
The Carina Core library is underway, and in-depth pattern work is just beginning. Special emphasis on accessibility has been a crucial challenge at this atomic level.
Evaluation
This project is ongoing, but so far we managed to design core components that meet business, UX, and accessibility requirements without sacrificing visual design or character for Carina, which feels like a big win. More to come...
