INTERBANK

INTERBANK

Building a Figma Design System for an e-commerce

Building a Figma Design System for an e-commerce

E-Commerce • UI Design

E-Commerce • UI Design

Overview

Overview

Role

Role

  • UI Designer.

  • Met constantly with lead UX, project manager, developers and designers.

  • Duration: 7 months.

  • UI Designer.

  • Met constantly with lead UX, project manager, developers and designers.

  • Duration: 7 months.

About

About

Shopstar is a Peruvian e-commerce platform enabling Interbank customers to redeem their credit card points for products offered by various marketplaces and entrepreneurs. For this project, I developed a design system in Figma to address the UX/UI team's challenges in maintaining design consistency.

Project Goal

Project Goal

Consistent UI: to reduce technical debt and create a solid brand identity.

Consistent UI: to reduce technical debt and create a solid brand identity.

Workflow efficiency: to optimize internal operations and save time.

Workflow efficiency: to optimize internal operations and save time.

Challenges

Challenges

Problems with the Existing Design System Workflow in Sketch

Problems with the Existing Design System Workflow in Sketch

Inconsistency

Inconsistency

MVP: UI Kit

Before developing the system, I conducted a series of individual online interviews with team members, including one UX/UI designer, one lead designer, and two front-end developers. These interviews aimed to uncover their needs and challenges with the existing workflow. The key insight I discovered was as follows:

Before developing the system, I conducted a series of individual online interviews with team members, including one UX/UI designer, one lead designer, and two front-end developers. These interviews aimed to uncover their needs and challenges with the existing workflow. The key insight I discovered was as follows:

Developers: "We have a hard time figuring out each component's behavior"


Designers: "It's difficult to coexist with Figma and Sketch at the same time"

The answer was clear: we needed to adopt a single software platform to serve as the unified source of truth for both designers and developers.

After careful consideration, the design team decided to adopt Figma over Sketch. I then collected all recently delivered prototypes, analyzed their styles and components, and developed a UI Kit in Figma, which looked like this:

Designers could simply click on a style to automatically apply the library's color, text, shadow, or grid to an element:

Similarly, for components like buttons, designers simply needed to navigate to Assets, type "button," and drag the element onto the canvas. They could then select from properties such as:

  • Device: Mobile, Desktop.

  • Hierarchy: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary.

  • Size: L56, L52, M48, S40, S32.

  • State: Active, Hover, Loading, Disabled.

  • Icon?: Yes, no.

  • Text: Change the text.

The final result, after creating all possible variations for each component, looked like this:

I followed the same process for inputs, dropdowns, search bars, notifications, tooltips, badges, loaders, radio buttons, checkboxes, modals, tables, cards, and navbars.

For the icons, we created our own set, organized by size. Whenever we needed to design a new icon, we followed a system to ensure consistency: a 32 x 32 box with a 2-pixel thickness.

Illustrations were also organized by size:

After organizing and labeling all styles and components, I gathered the team to explain how to use the new UI Kit. Whenever we decided to upload a new component, I was responsible for updating the kit, which would automatically reflect changes across all our Figma files. The final step was to create a Design System and begin documenting the behavior of all elements.

La Playa Design System

La Playa Design System

La Playa Design System is Shopstar's comprehensive guide. It includes principles, categorizations, best practices, and the entire visual identity of Shopstar. Each element has its own set of rules and classes that must remain consistent throughout the design and development process. For example, here are the documented principles for the shadow element in La Playa:

La Playa Design System is Shopstar's comprehensive guide. It includes principles, categorizations, best practices, and the entire visual identity of Shopstar. Each element has its own set of rules and classes that must remain consistent throughout the design and development process. For example, here are the documented principles for the shadow element in La Playa:

As a team, we followed the same process to document colors, fonts, spacing, grids, badges, buttons, breadcrumbs, and cards. The first version of La Playa now includes over 600 components, 100 styles, 100 icons, 20 3D illustrations, and 30 templates. All of these elements use variables and are built according to Figma best practices, such as Auto Layout and Master components.

With La Playa, the design team was able to create more consistent and aesthetically pleasing designs:

With La Playa, the design team was able to create more consistent and aesthetically pleasing designs:

Looking to the future, it’s important to note that the system is constantly evolving and will continue to do so as long as the product and software are updated.


This process sparked numerous discussions within the team about enhancing involvement in the post-handoff process for the front-end team. It was a significant project, and the entire team was eager to see it come to fruition. This is certainly my proudest project so far, as I led its creation while still an intern at Shopstar, learning many things independently along the way.

Results

Results

100% satisfaction

(according to an internal evaluation at the end of the year)

100% satisfaction

(according to an internal evaluation at the end of the year)

75% increase in efficiency

(measuring the time designers took in creating a prototype before and after)

75% increase in efficiency

(measuring the time designers took in creating a prototype before and after)

Key Learnings

Key Learnings

One step at a time

As the sprint progressed, I realized this was a massive project involving significant changes in business management and a reworking of both old and new design elements. Feeling overwhelmed, I followed my UX lead's advice to break the project into phases, which made the process much more manageable.

One step at a time

As the sprint progressed, I realized this was a massive project involving significant changes in business management and a reworking of both old and new design elements. Feeling overwhelmed, I followed my UX lead's advice to break the project into phases, which made the process much more manageable.

Aesthetics + Structure = UI design

UI designers must adopt a systematic and collaborative mindset. Before starting, they need to define and design multiple use cases for each element (buttons, notifications, forms, etc.), ensure adherence to accessibility standards, understand the team's habits, and explain how to use each component. This first project marked the beginning of a long-term relationship with this craft.

Aesthetics + Structure = UI design

UI designers must adopt a systematic and collaborative mindset. Before starting, they need to define and design multiple use cases for each element (buttons, notifications, forms, etc.), ensure adherence to accessibility standards, understand the team's habits, and explain how to use each component. This first project marked the beginning of a long-term relationship with this craft.

© Rosa Moriya 2023

Made with Framer

© Rosa Moriya 2023

Made with Framer