Migrating and expanding the Service NSW design system to be utilised by all product teams

Overview

Service NSW is a New South Wales Government agency within the Department of Customer Service that provides one-stop access to government services and other partner agencies via online, phone or in-person at its service centres.

The Service NSW design system was originally designed by Future Friendly, all contained within a Word document and managed by the website product team.

This project kicked off during the Transaction Team’s search for a place to house their transactional component content, which later evolved into a bigger product for all product teams.

Viewable deck:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1VflnBxrywtFfSzR6ULmW-KD4w_JUPxsU/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=106317822301983456082&rtpof=true&sd=true

Problem statement

The design system at the time was placed within a shared Word Document on OneDrive and needed to be lifted and shifted onto a new platform that would encourage a shared contribution model.

After Sharepoint and Confluence were not deemed a need-fit for the two key audiences, designers and developers, the Website team was tasked to develop a proof-of-concept in the Drupal CMS to see if it could meet future needs.

One of the main goals was to ensure we re-utilise existing components as much as possible for consistency and a quick build.

Users & audience

Product Managers and Designers, Front-end developers and Content Designers of Service NSW.

Roles & responsibilities

The website product team at Service NSW is relatively large with a small number of Product Designers, Two Senior Product Designers and one Principal Product Designer. Due to the content management demand, our team was largely content designers. Each designer usually focuses on their initiative priority – however, this initiative had a tight time constraint and involved the collaboration with the team’s Principal Product Designer.

Processes

Platform feasibility study

Drupal is an open-source CMS back-end with a deployed static front-end using HTML/React. The CMS also enables the shared contribution model as the CMS is easy to use with its simple back-end UI. Deployments and changes can be made immediately as the site is built and replaced on demand. This supports the ability to introduce scalable features, content and functionality into the medium-long term.

Mapping workshops