New design systems offer consistency over various brand products and significantly reduce development costs. But, if a design system is introduced to existing customers without testing or even a warning, the results can range everywhere from excitement to disappointment. Patterns we all feel make sense can feel foreign and could interrupt mission-critical work.  

Recently I was involved in a project that "reskinned" a popular Thomson Reuters product in our new design system to introduce it to some key clients. 

I worked with the product owners and the research team to develop a sequence of pages that would expose clients to critical pages and allow our researchers to ask questions per our goals.

GOALS

• What do users think of the look from a purely subjective point of view?

• Can the users locate navigation items that might have been tucked away or renamed?

• Does the new design system offer better "scannability" of table-intensive data?

• Does the File Viewer make sense?

OUTCOME

• Users enjoyed the refreshed look and felt the application was modern and trustworthy.

• Requested items located quickly with some exploration. 

• The user appreciated the more relaxed feel of the tables and felt it allowed them to find data quickly

• Most users appreciated the change to the file viewer but requested more data be available in the right panel.