Autodesk: Shotgun Design System
Multi-Context Design System for Shotgun
Research with users
Autodesk X Award
The Design Systems team that I led, was made up of a combination of a few dedicated designers and developers, as well as a mixed group of other designers and developers that had a dotted line to the initiative. We went through several iteractions of the design system, both for React components, iOS components, Quicktime 4 for desktop applications, and components to be intergrated into 3rd party desktop applications, such as Priemere, After Effects, Maya, and Nuke, among others.
Without our knowledge, the larger Autodesk organization was paying attention to what we were doing.
During the first all-company Design Summit in 2016, our team won the inaugural Autodesk X Award, highlighting the best techical and design innovations of the year.
Additional Shotgun Design System components and specifications.
My design system team lead, and dedicated product manager showcasing our X award.
Results
Created a design system that included over 7 different technologies and contexts
Research synthesis
Because a large number of Shotgun users were using our Artist interfaces, which were based on a “dark mode”, we made sure the Shotgun Design System included a “dark-mode”
Autodesk design leadership, who was starting to work on a global design system for other applications, decided to incoporate our “dark mode” as their standard system components for their larger more comprehensive design system.
It was amazing for us to see the larger organization’s love for the work we were doing on the Shotgun Design System.
Not to long after we finalized the design system and started incorporting it into Shotgun’s development, Autodesk had a large reduction in force, and sadly a large number of our design team was imp[acted. The system can still be seen in Shotgun’s new interfaces.
Shotgun Design System won the most prestigious design award within the organization in 2016
Components of the Shotgun Design System
Executive Summary
While leading the Autodesk Media & Entertainment product design team, I was given a challenging problem: We need to redesign a multi-platform 10-year-old SaaS product for the industry, but it is used every day by thousands who do not embrace change so well.
We started a large endeavor we called the Shotgun Design System. Our goal was to unify the experience for users, even if they were moving between web, desktop, mobile, tablet, and software plugins. The challenge was the platform used many different technologies, from React to QT4.
As part of the research, with both customers and employees, we came up with these five core values which serve as the foundation for their decisions, actions, and communication are:
Simplicity
Clarity
Usefulness
Efficiency
Discovery