Intelligent experience with Eightfold AI

In my role as a Design Director at Eightfold AI, I've had the privilege of wearing multiple hats, including those of a designer, project manager, and product manager, particularly for our flagship design system, Octuple. This case study delves into my contributions and experiences across various facets of design and management, illustrating my impact on the team and the organization.

Design Leadership and the Octuple Design System

Designing and leading with vision

As a Design System Driector, my primary responsibility is to ensure that user experience and interface design align with Eightfold AI's vision. Eightfold AI was getting a lot of feedback on their design. Old looking UI, bad user experience, unresponsive interactions, not mobile friendly, are some of the comments Eightfold AI had to associate with. After thorough discussion with my supervisor who is the head of design, we believed that

  1. building a design system from ground up

  2. apply it to one of our core products

  3. show how it can be scaled across different devices

  4. and providing support through out the whole implementation

is the way to do it because this would allow us to rethink everything from scratch from design perspective. It is crucial to come up with multi-quarter plan with milestones to provide confidence from both the senior leadership and my peers.

The Octuple Design System

Creating the Octuple Design System was a comprehensive endeavor that required strategic planning, collaboration, and a focus on scalability, accessibility, and consistency. Here’s a detailed account of how I built the system and the progress made along the way.

The concept of a design system at Eightfold AI was primarily driven by the need to manage design at scale, reduce redundancy, and create a shared language and visual consistency across different pages and channels. The system's design was inspired by natural elements like the golden ratio and methodologies such as the Atomic Design Methodology, which provided a structured order and hierarchy in design.

Foundation and Inspiration

Key Components and Features

Design Tokens

Design tokens were pivotal in expressing design decisions within Eightfold's design language. They facilitated communication of design decisions between designers and developers, covering aspects like color, typography, and animation.

Component Library

The Octuple Component Library was a significant achievement, with 4,472 component imports powering 7,561 implementations. It included a wide range of components and utilities, such as buttons, modals, and navigation elements, which were regularly updated with new features and bug fixes.

Responsiveness and Accessibility

A critical focus was on making the design system fully responsive, with features like interchangeable filters, customizable page sections, and data views tailored for both table and list card formats, enhancing flexibility across devices and screen sizes. Accessibility was emphasized by ensuring compliance with WCAG and Section 508 standards, making Eightfold products inclusive for users with disabilities

Collaboration and Development Process

Workflow and Ownership

The development process followed a structured workflow, from identifying new components to releasing them. This involved collaboration between design and engineering teams and a formal proposal and review process to ensure consistency and efficiency.

Team Contributions

Collaboration was key, with team members invited to contribute to the development of components, patterns, and animation effects. This inclusive approach allowed for diverse inputs and ensured the system evolved with the needs of its users.

Regular Updates and Communication

Regular updates were communicated through newsletters that highlighted version changes, new features, and contributions from team members. This transparency ensured everyone was aligned with the system's progress and ongoing efforts to enhance accessibility and improve UI components.

Setting Design Processes

Establishing Efficient Workflows

I play a key role in setting design processes at Eightfold AI, focusing on the creation and implementation of design systems. My experience in building design systems from scratch and creating design scaling architectures is instrumental in establishing efficient design workflows.

Scrum Master and Agile Methodologies

As a scrum master for the design team, I facilitate agile methodologies to enhance team productivity. I ensure that the design team follows scrum practices, helping them to plan, execute, and review their work in iterative cycles. My experience with scrum and agile methodologies supports my role in fostering a collaborative and efficient design environment.

Training and Communication

Training on Jira

Training the design team on how to use Jira is an essential part of my role. I ensure that all completed designs are attached to JIRA tickets, facilitating transparent tracking of engineering handoffs and other design activities. This training enhances the team's ability to manage design tasks and track project progress effectively.

Communication through Confluence

As a scrum master for the design team, I facilitate agile methodologies to enhance team productivity. I ensure that the design team follows scrum practices, helping them to plan, execute, and review their work in iterative cycles. My experience with scrum and agile methodologies supports my role in fostering a collaborative and efficient design environment.

Supporting Product Design

Talent acquisition workflow

Talent Acquisition product is one of the main products of Eightfold AI and it was the right decision to use this view as a way to show how Octuple Design System can make the company’s products to look like. I showed the leadership how good it will look on a large monitor, average monitor, ipad, tablet portrait to mobile. To put a little delight on it, I showed how the dark theme will map and how the interface will look like from a mobile device to a large monitor again.

This design-led initiative was a major success to the product. Our clients were delighted to have a better user experience provided through the Octuple design system. A lot of delighful clients equals to winning a newer and bigger clients. We were able to use Octuple to support our product inside other platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Eightfold products using Octuple design system and patterns were also used in the following product marketing videos.

Conclusion

In summary, my role at Eightfold AI as a Design Director encompasses a wide range of responsibilities, from leading design efforts and managing complex projects to setting design processes and facilitating effective communication. My contributions to the Octuple design system, training on Jira, and support for product designs like Copilot and Agentic experience underscore my commitment to enhancing user experience and driving innovation within the organization.