Overview
Air Design System
Air is the design system for the upwork platform. My work involved defining concepts, component behavior, page templates, and integrating motion.
Purpose
Support for multiple product team component requirements in a scalable & consistent fashion.
Our small team was dedicated solely to design systems. We tried to satisfy a backlog of component requirements as well as educate on how and when to use various elements.
Components
Interaction Behavior
A large portion of my time was designing interaction for components that I was responsible for. This included specs and walkthroughs with our dev team to better understand what was needed. Rquirements for these were discussed with product teams during DS office hours.
The following is an example of slider control. I also worked on many others such as pickers, inputs, dropdowns, popups, etc
Concepts
In addition to components, I was able to explore various concepts in effort to influence product team direction.
These concepts were completely exploratory to help shape a vision or north star for where we may take upwork in the future.
Page Templates
Approach
Focus on Simplifying and Consistency
I was tasked with creating page structures for team usage. This would ultimately provide consistency across product pages that very much needed it. These would benefit both developers and designers with production ready code and componentized figma designs.
Structure
Minimal Elements that can be reused without causing issue.
We had a number of very similar component strutures for page types. However there was always inconsistencies with how they were used. We wanted to provide guidance but also take out the guesswork by providing design and code that adehered to most cases.
Motion
Principles, Style, Pace, Examples & Page level transitions
While a few components had motion, we wanted to make sure we had a reuasble and solid approach towards motion.
I worked on developing a set of principles and guidelines to showcase how we want to use motion throughout the product in a scalable way. These priniciples were then put into practice for a majority of our components.
Final thoughts
I really like the people & culture at upwork. I was quite happy with my time there.
The design organization definitely had some growing pains, but I'm curious to see how the product evolves over the coming years and plan to utilize the platform itself from time to time.
