Refactoring the Ericsson UDN design system

During my tenure at Idean, we launched the initial version of Ericsson’s UDN platform for the 2016 Mobile World Congress. Given the tight deadline, the MVP was developed in a siloed manner, with different individuals responsible for building various pages of the product while maintaining cohesive communication to meet implementation standards and deadlines. This approach led to numerous inconsistencies in both design and code, resulting in multiple variants of base components such as buttons and modals. When Ericsson renewed the contract to develop version 1.5, it became imperative to refactor and standardize the design system to scale the platform, eliminate design inconsistencies, and improve development efficiency.

To address these challenges, I established a set of design system principles to guide the design and code refactoring of the platform:

• Consistency: Ensuring uniformity across all components to provide a cohesive user experience by standardizing base components.
• Scalability: Creating components that can easily adapt to future expansions without extensive rework to add, grow, and evolve the product.
• Modularity: Designing components that can be independently used and reused across various parts of the platform to reduce redundancies and increase efficiency.
• Flexibility: Allowing for customization and adjustments without compromising the integrity of the design system to meet diverse use cases.

We started with refactoring base components like typography, buttons, and form components, and then moved on to more complex platform components such as modals and charts. This systematic approach resulted in a cleaner, more consistent design system, reducing design pattern and component bugs by nearly 50% and increasing development efficiency by 30% through more modular and reusable code components. The successful implementation of these principles not only streamlined our development process, but also set a strong foundation for future growth and scalability.