Totalplay
OVERVIEW
Totalplay is Mexico's biggest telecom congomerate. It's basically the Xfinity of Mexico. They offer a lot of products and services across a wide range of categories. They wanted a way to take what lived across multiple apps and services and bring them all under one "super app". This meant new branding, a new mobile app experience, and a larger, more robust design system.
CLIENT
Totalplay
SERVICES
Design & content strategy
UI Design
Brand Design
Design System
Product Design
CONTRIBUTION
Design & creative direction
Conceptual design
Design system governance
Client & stakeholder management
Design leadership
TEAM
Myself
Internal design team
Totalplay internal design team
The Challenges on this project were plentiful. The ask was to unify media, food, delivery services, shopping, telecom, and account management serivces all under one app. Think Amazon meets Xfinity meets Uber Eats. Oh, and it's all in Spanish (I only sort of speak spanish).
Design systems are hard.
Especially when they need to govern multiple product offerings. Add on to it that the whole thing still lived in Sketch (but they wanted to move it to Figma). And all documentation needed to be both in English and Spanish. As I mentioned, I'm only semi-fluent(ish) in Spanish even on my best day.
I'm no stranger to design systems but my job was cut out for me. I spent weeks auditing what was there, unifying what could be unified and working with folks on the Totalplay design system on governance models to build the foundations of a system that could be used in a new app but also feel at home in thier original offerings as well.
My involvement was auditing what they already had, translating it into Figma from Sketch, and setting up a foundational system. This system relied on a documentation system that measured in detailed terms what everything is for and how it should be used. I also developed the preliminary governance model for how the system would be used by their design team.
APPROACH
Creating a positive client relationship is crucial to overcoming inevitable challenges of complex projects.
Training a client side design team
While I was working on the desing system foundational work, I was tasked with helping get their design team up to speed. I treated it like any other design team I've been asked to lead and did my best to foster a postivie relationship built on mutual trust and understanding.
My involvement was training the Totalplay designers on working with the design system that I had set up. Adding in new components, setting up time for a governance review with myself and the product owner, and creating a backlog of components that need to be translated from the old system into the new one.
Conceptual Designs
I love getting in on the ground floor of a good design system project but my heart is always going to bein conceptual work. Once I got my team up and running producing design system components that I could review, it freed me up to split my time with the mobile app and brand expression team.
My invovlement was assisting the brand team in creating conceptual designs using their brand expressions and applying it to a future state mobile app. I came up with multiple concepts, refine 2 or 3 and then created a proto-user journey to map them against. They referenced our design system when possible but since it was still being built out and tested, there was still some room to be creative within the context of the experience.
TAKEAWAYS
Hasta luego
This was always the plan but at the end of my time on the project, it was my job to transition the team from relying on me to run the show to operating in a self-sustaining manor. Luckily they are all very capable of doing that, and I knew the work was in good hands.
My involvement I created the documentation framework for design system handoff. I also partnered with the client lead UX designer on the handoff experience, allowing them to step into my role and letting their team look to them for the future of the project.
Side note: The designers for Totalplay were all lovely people who were a joy to work with.
Master of karate and friendship for everyone.
The End