Problem

Google wanted to make sure all of its websites looked and felt like they came from one company, but marketers own their own sites and can choose to work with several agencies. That meant that it was difficult to build cohesion

Solution

• I partnered with a team at Google’s Brand Studio to refresh their old web guidelines as the content strategist to help determine what to include. Next, I interviewed the team (including designers and developers) to tease out why it mattered.

• After that, I wrote the guidelines and the deck that we shared with agencies to help them adopt it.

Impact

Before MWS, the websites above would have taken weeks to months to launch. But because of the design patterns we established and the code base powering MWS being user tested, accessible, built to Google's high standards, and rigorously QA'd we could confidently launch websites in just days.

• We successfully complied with WCAG AA design standards and Google's internal GAR4 rating for accessibility — making this a truly best-in-class design system.

• We successfully established clear design patterns for marketing teams across the company and became a central authority for questions and training.

• We sold Google's senior leadership on the value of a marketing design system and effectively took MWS from a part-time project to a properly resourced design team.

• It’s been adopted by a number of teams already. You can see living examples of this system being used on Google’s About site, Google.org, Google Maps, Digital Wellbeing and Google for Games to name a few!