Estée Lauder Companies

Design Systems | Workshops | Design Thinking | Asset Creation | UX | Product Design

Elevating Brand Prestige through Unified Digital Systems

Overview

Estée Lauder companies faced challenges with inconsistent platforms and systems that eroded its prestige image. Over the years, different teams built various systems, resulting in an unpleasant and disjointed user experience. Regional intranets were outdated and difficult to manage, and the inconsistent use of language and tone compounded the issue, making onboarding new employees complex and confusing.

To address these challenges, we developed a unified design system for all platforms, apps, and systems within the company. The vision was to create something beautiful and worthy of the brand's prestige, unifying the disparate digital landscape.

We started by evaluating and defining the new visual language, choosing ServiceNow as the candidate application. This platform was undergoing a large-scale change and was frequently used by new employees. Workshops with the company helped us digest corporate brand guidelines and ideate on necessary components for the design system.

We listed out components needed for the initial release, focusing on commonly used elements such as navigation, form controls, text styles, buttons, badges, pills, images, cards/tiles, and colours. Additionally, we recognised the importance of tone of voice, incorporating language into the system as a critical component.

Results

The design and development phases involved creating example pages and incorporating the new visual language and tone of voice. We used Zeplin for deployment, allowing efficient handoff to developers and ensuring a time-efficient development process. This approach unified the digital systems, improved user experience, and maintained the brand's prestige image both internally and externally.

Outcome

  • Developed a unified design system for all platforms, apps, and systems

  • Improved the internal and external prestige image

  • Enhanced user experience with consistent design and tone

  • Simplified onboarding process for new employees

What we did

  • Conducted workshops to digest corporate brand guidelines and evaluate the current state of platforms.

  • Chose ServiceNow, the IT self-service platform, as the starting point for implementing the new visual language.

  • Created a comprehensive list of design components, incorporating visual and language elements to ensure consistency.

  • Deployed the design system using Zeplin for efficient handoff to developers and teams.