Allspark Design System: Content
I set the vision and strategy for integrating content design into the Allspark design system and led the content design team to deliver key guidelines for the MVP release.
20%
fewer content changes
50%
Faster project delivery
25%
Less cross-team communications
Company
Role
Principal Content Designer
Key Collaborators
UX leadership
Content design team
Engineering leads
Marketing team lead
Duration
8 months
Challenge
Questrade's content design team grew rapidly over two years, and its UX writing style guide and processes were outdated. This rapid growth led to inconsistencies in content design documentation and governance, causing inefficiencies, slower project delivery, and a fragmented user experience.
Questrade's Allspark design system team was already expanding its component library into a full design system, but needed a clear strategy to integrate content design effectively.
Discovery
To address these challenges, I led a comprehensive discovery phase that laid the foundation for our approach:
User workshops
I led workshops to identify content designers' pain points related to guidelines and documentation.
The team's struggles with outdated UX writing guidelines, conflicting writing guidelines across the organization, and unclear processes and responsibilities confirmed we needed more structured, accessible guidelines.
Benchmarking
I conducted surveys with content designers, UX managers, and product managers to quantify the existing inefficiencies. We found that each project averaged:
5 content design revisions
12 daily communications to align on content rules
This confirmed the need for guidelines to cut down on revisions and communication overhead.
Comparative analysis
We compared leading design systems to understand industry standards and best practices for integrating content design with engineering and UI design. This helped establish a benchmark and gave us insight into how we could align our practices with industry leaders.
Guideline audits
I audited Questrade's existing writing, brand, and communication guidelines, as well as the component library, to identify gaps and inconsistencies. This helped set the direction for updating and integrating content guidelines with the design system.
Writing guidelines
Component guidelines
Guiding Principles
I used the discovery insights to set guiding principles for the project:
User-centricity: Make every content guideline easy for content designers to understand, ensuring clarity and consistency in their product design work.
Scalability: Create guidelines that can grow and evolve as the Allspark design system matures, supporting future needs without major rework.
Cross-functional collaboration: Ensure guidelines integrate smoothly with UI design, engineering, and other teams to minimize friction and improve teamwork.
Efficiency: Develop streamlined processes that reduce unnecessary content revisions and make communications between teams more effective.
These principles helped shape the next steps, ensuring our approach was aligned with both immediate needs and future scalability.
My Approach
Envisioning
Building on my findings from the discovery phase, I collaborated with UX leadership to define the north-star vision for the Allspark content guidelines.
This included 7 guidelines:
For each guideline, I included:
What it is
What it includes
Who leads it
Who uses it
Prioritisation
I collaborated with UX leadership to prioritize core content design guidelines for the MVP release:
Writing Guidelines and Terminology Glossary: These were prioritized to address key pain points of Agile teams. They provided high impact with relatively low effort, focusing on reducing confusion and ensuring consistency.
Component Guidelines: These were fundamental to making sure content design worked seamlessly with engineering and UI design, supporting a smooth and integrated workflow.
Stakeholder engagement
To align all stakeholders and secure buy-in, I worked closely with the content design team lead to present our vision and strategy.
We conducted five targeted presentations—each tailored to different stakeholder groups, such as UX leadership, engineering, and product teams.
These presentations addressed the unique concerns of each group, secured alignment, and helped us gather valuable feedback. This ensured we had the necessary support and resources to move forward effectively.
Templates & How-tos
I led workshops and meetings between content designers and collaborators to:
Understand specific needs for MVP
Create templates and how-tos
Component guidelines
Terminology glossary
Writing guidelines
Long-term governance
To make sure our guidelines and processes could scale, I worked with leadership to develop a governance model that defined roles and responsibilities.
This was key to keeping consistency and ensuring that content guidelines could evolve smoothly. I also provided training sessions and ongoing mentorship to support both the content and UX teams in adopting and applying the new guidelines.
Writing guidelines
Outcome
We launched the Allspark MVP with writing guidelines, a terminology glossary, and component guidelines fully integrated.
These improvements directly addressed the challenges we identified, leading to more efficient workflows and a more consistent user experience. The impact of these initiatives included:
20%
Fewer content changes
50%
Faster delivery cycles
25%
Less daily alignment communication
Reflections & Learnings
This project highlighted the importance of early stakeholder alignment and proactive cross-team collaboration to make content guidelines successful.
By involving stakeholders early on and setting up clear guidelines and governance models, we cut down inefficiencies, reduced costly revisions, and laid a foundation for future scalability.
Moving forward, I will keep focusing on scalable content practices and fostering collaboration to maintain high product quality and efficient workflows.
“Kyle's systemic solutions empowered our design teams to deliver high-quality work while meeting business deadlines. His contributions have set a new standard for content design at Questrade.”
Dan
Sr UX Manager, Design systems | Questrade