Designing content guidelines for a design system
adyen
As Adyen expanded its products and services, the existing design system struggled to support consistent experiences across the platform. We rebuilt it with a modular approach creating components with clear guidelines, making it easier for cross-functional teams to build consistent experiences at scale.
Challenge
Without shared content guidance, teams interpreted components differently. Similar experiences used inconsistent labels, button text, error states, and other elements creating unnecessary variation across the product. The challenge was to create practical guidance making the process efficient while still serving multiple product journeys.
Team
Product design, engineering, product managers, marketing, and design system team.
What I did
Defined content standards for UI components
Created guidance for core design system components, documenting how each should be used, recommended content patterns, character limits, accessibility considerations, and examples of effective UX writing.
Established reusable content principles
Developed reusable principles that teams could apply consistently across products. This included guidance for buttons, form fields, helper text, validation messages, banners, notifications, modals, and other common interface components.
Improved consistency at scale
Embedded content guidance within the design system which reduced repetitive content reviews, encouraged more consistent user experiences, and made content design expertise more accessible across the organisation.
Supported adoption and continuous improvement
Gathered feedback from teams using the guidelines and iterated on the documentation over time, refining examples, clarifying recommendations, and expanding coverage as new components were introduced.
Work
Outcome
The design system became a shared reference for teams designing experiences across Adyen. And rather than it being a shortcoming, it became a starting point for collaboration and conversation around a more efficient design system.
What I learned
The project was a great experience in how to shift perspective from designing individual experiences to designing for scale. Also, good guidelines don’t prescribe every answer, they provide principles that help teams make better decisions.
