Case study.
Walmart
Building design systems that scale
I embedded with an enterprise product team as the design system SME to build a pattern library, extending Living Design, Walmart's core system. The new library addresses the more custom needs of product designers and engineers in Walmart's enterprise business pillar.
Summary.
Please note! This is a brief summary of my work. I'd be happy to present a more detailed case study at your convenience! grgsmthdsn@gmail.com
The primary goals of this project were to help our Enterprise business pillar teams:
- Move faster
- Reduce duplication & re-work
- Fix inconsistent experiences
My personal OKR was to embed with an Enterprise design team as the design system subject matter expert and help them build a new pattern library to achieve these goals.
⏰ Duration
Winter '23 - Spring '25
🧰 Team
- 1 Senior design director
- 1 Design director
- 1 Design system SME
- 1 Accessibility SME
- 1 Product design lead
- 2 Senior designers
🤓 My role
Design system SME
Uphold system standards & practices, create and oversee governance model, construction of components & patterns, documentation, engineering specifications, collaborate with A11y expert and product engineers.
⏰ Duration
🧰 Team
🤓 My role
Winter '23 - Spring '25
- 1 Senior design director
- 1 Design director
- 1 Design system SME
- 1 Accessibility SME
- 1 Product design lead
- 2 Senior designers
Design system SME
Uphold system standards & practices, create and oversee governance model, construction of components & patterns, documentation, engineering specifications, collaborate with A11y expert and product engineers.
Impact.
- We delivered a robust pattern library, extending Walmart’s core design system, containing molecules, organisms, and templates to address needs specific to Walmart’s Enterprise business pillar.
- Our product set the roadmap to replace multiple single, independently managed libraries.
- I ensured that all components and patterns were built in accordance with the design system team’s established best practices and processes.
- I applied the core system’s design tokens and foundations to all library artifacts, allowing for stability, consistency, and future theme capability.
- I helped install and maintain a governance model to support ~60 designers, ~200 web engineers.
- I delivered detailed engineering specifications for components and patterns, and collaborated with our engineering partners during the development and QA processes.
Work samples.
Below are examples of a component I built, with all variants and states, and some page templates. The intent of this library was for designers to drag page templates, as a starting point, and place components & patterns into their content slots to make customizations.
Key takeaways.
My work on this library represents the first effort the Walmart design system team made in a direct collaboration with a product team to deliver more complex patterns and templates, beyond the global atoms & molecules of the core system.
As the design system lead on this project, I was able to set the roadmap for how Walmart approaches design systems at scale, and methods for both internal team collaboration and governance of the library as a product.
Get in touch.
I welcome the opportunity to discuss this project in more detail, as well as more of my design system work! grgsmthdsn@gmail.com