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Android Developer Platform Redesign
Product design, Design system, Illustration
Client: Google
Role: Lead product designer
Agency: Potato London
Oversight: Mark Kitney
UXR studies: Google Android team
Developer for Android (or DAC) is a Google platform, with 7m active users, that helps developers find tools and resources to build better experiences more easily, across every Android device. In 2019-2020 I had the great chance to be part of a small engineering team, working as the lead designer for more than 10 months.
In late 2019 the global brand of Android changed completely. Based on this generic revamping, an opportunity appeared for us to elevate the design of DAC, redesign the interface, rethink of the whole information architecture, bring delight via a new visual language and solidify the experience from a component level, by establishing the first design system.
Responsibilities
Redesign strategy
User interface design / Design system
Iconographic library / Illustration guidelines
Workshop facilitation / Presentations to Google
Problem overview
①
There are areas across DAC where the user experience contains inconsistencies in the use of components.
There’s a risk of this continuing to grow if these are not addressed in a modular, yet flexible and scalable way.
What we should do
Create a leaner, more structured platform, by reducing the number of instances we have of type, colours, grids and components
These are all different instances of the same component, the News card
②
Accessibility and usability standards are not coherently applied throughout the platform.
What we should do
Apply accessibility and usability at a component level, ensuring a systematic approach that leads to all pages developed being fully accessible and coherent in experience
③
Team members are building or redesigning existing components / pages without resources and external teams are providing engineering with inconsistent designs.
What we should do
Give all teams access to the central design system, allowing them to educate themselves on what exists and pull resources to design their experiences
An example of the same page, being designed by different teams;
The left one was first designed externally, without being aligned to the design system