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Leveraging Style Guides to Enhance Client Experience

Leveraging Style Guides to Enhance Client Experience

We all know that designing for a CMS requires an approach that champions systems, not pages. Communicating this approach to your clients can be, well, hard. In the interest of establishing a shared understanding of the systems, not pages concept, we expose our thinking in the form of a style guide that gradually evolves throughout the course of the project. Our style guide documents the system by abstracting the many design objects that can be assembled to create a page. This level of abstraction helps us illustrate the logic and relationships behind the design decisions we make. This, in turn, leads to more meaningful conversations around the design objects and their roles within the system. In this presentation, Michael Mesker and Patrick Grady, designers at Palantir.net, will discuss the evolution of the style guide from a reference point to a deliverable that transforms clients into empowered decision makers.

Patrick Grady

April 29, 2014
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  1. Leveraging Style Guides to
    Enhance Client Experience
    Patrick Grady & Michael Mesker
    University of Illinois Web Conference 2014
    Tuesday, April 29, 14

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  2. Tuesday, April 29, 14

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  3. Excitement Anxiety
    Tuesday, April 29, 14

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  4. Anxiety around content:
    Where exactly is my old stuff
    going? Will everything be
    accounted for? What about the
    new features?
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  5. Anxiety around budget:
    Large websites cost a lot of
    money to make. They also tend
    to have a long lifespan.
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  6. Average Project Timeline
    01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 End!
    Designers
    Developers
    PM
    Hi!
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  7. Style Guides
    Enter the Super Deliverable.
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  8. “Design Systems, not Pages.”
    — Everyone on the internet
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  9. MailChimp
    http://ux.mailchimp.com/patterns
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  10. Tuesday, April 29, 14

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  11. Paul Robert Lloyd
    http://paulrobertlloyd.com/about/styleguide/
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  12. Tuesday, April 29, 14

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  13. Fact.
    Style guides communicate
    the design system in an efficient
    and organized manner.
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  15. Small Tabs
    http://mesker.github.io/smalltabs/
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  16. Elements.
    Elements are the foundation of
    the system. Well designed
    elements can begin to express
    the site’s personality.
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  20. Components.
    Components are designed to
    serve specific functional roles
    within the system.
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  24. Templates.
    Templates are layouts designed
    to house specific components.
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  27. sys·tem |ˈsistəm| noun
    A set of connected parts forming
    a complex whole.
    ( Elements, Components & Templates )
    ( a CMS driven website )
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  28. Easy to parse
    table of contents
    navigation
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  29. Visual Example
    Description
    Component Title
    Markup Example
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  30. Regarding Schedules.
    The Super Deliverable wasn’t
    built in a day.
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  31. 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 End!
    Designers
    Developers
    PM
    Average Project Timeline (again)
    Make the
    style guide.
    Design all of
    the things.
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  32. 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 End!
    Designers
    Developers
    PM
    Average Project Timeline (again)
    Design all of the things.
    (and document as you go.)
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  33. Win 1
    Style guides work to establish
    a common language between
    ourselves and the client.
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  34. Win 2
    Style guides create a centralized
    location for all design, prototype
    and documentation progress.
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  35. Win 3
    Style guides provide the client
    with a foundation on which the
    design system can grow over
    the course of its lifespan.
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  36. Fact.
    Working in the medium allows
    us to build our style guide during
    the design process, instead
    of at the very end.
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  37. Quick, to the browser!
    Building the Super Deliverable
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  38. “Sloth Love Chunk”
    Reusable modules = efficiency
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  39. SMACSS
    http://smacss.com/
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  40. BEM
    http://bem.info/
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  42. Sass
    http://sass-lang.com/
    Tuesday, April 29, 14

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  45. Jekyll
    http://jekyllrb.com/
    Tuesday, April 29, 14

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  46. The Web’s most beloved power-couple
    YAML & Liquid
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  55. The Style Guide Guide
    http://vinspee.me/style-guide-guide/
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  56. Making your own Super Deliverable:
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  57. Making your own Super Deliverable:
    • Be resourceful: see if you can hijack something
    to do what you want.
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  58. Making your own Super Deliverable:
    • Be resourceful: see if you can hijack something
    to do what you want.
    • Use a tool that increases efficiency with your
    workflow or development team.
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  59. Making your own Super Deliverable:
    • Be resourceful: see if you can hijack something
    to do what you want.
    • Use a tool that increases efficiency with your
    workflow or development team.
    • Be wary of overhead: don’t use a framework if
    you don’t have to.
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  60. Making your own Super Deliverable:
    • Be resourceful: see if you can hijack something
    to do what you want.
    • Use a tool that increases efficiency with your
    workflow or development team.
    • Be wary of overhead: don’t use a framework if
    you don’t have to.
    • Think open source: use a tool that is widely
    supported in the web community.
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  61. Fact.
    Client Experience is directly tied
    to client education.
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  62. Fact.
    Style guides look good on you.
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  63. Thanks!
    Michael Mesker
    @meskermichael
    Patrick Grady
    @patrickgrady
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  64. Resources
    Paul Robert Lloyd
    http://paulrobertlloyd.com/about/styleguide/
    MailChimp
    http://ux.mailchimp.com/patterns
    Small Tabs Style Guide, Michael Mesker & Patrick Grady
    http://mesker.github.io/smalltabs/
    BEM
    http://bem.info/
    SMACSS
    http://smacss.com/
    Sass
    http://sass-lang.com/
    Jekyll
    http://jekyllrb.com/
    The Style Guide Guide
    http://vinspee.me/style-guide-guide/
    Tuesday, April 29, 14

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