Hi,
We are really excited at Agora Sas to unveil our Design System: Constellation.
I am sure that you wonder why we are doing this and some you might ask themselves what a is a Design System. So I will take a few minutes of your time to answer those.
A Design System
First a Design System (DS) is a set of rules you set yourselves to design visually your products. Though it looks like more and more companies are developing their own, it has been around for ages.
I always like to bring out the example of Ready To Eat cereal.
You see cereal boxes follow a DS. We all know the cereals come in a box
- At the top of the box comes the brand umbrella
- In big letters below we see the product name, below an illustration.
- At the back, we will find the marketing message, sometimes games or promotional coupons.
- Finally on the side, nutritional facts, contents and overall required legal text will be printed.
We all know the format and most brand adhere to it.
Now why would your brand not go a different way and stand out by changing the location of the promotional material or the shape of the box. Mostly because we do not spend a long time buying cereals and if you have to look hard for the information you want, you might just choose a product adhering to the standard DS to save time.
So in a nutshell, a DS is a system to organize information visually to provide consistency, or efficiency to your users.
Why do we need one ?
With the previous explanation, it seems pretty obvious why we need one and I am wondering how we could work without one before.
Given the complexity of our product and the rate at which we add new functionalities, we need to make sure that using our products Is obvious. Without a DS, we build AGORA PLUS like a giant manor of old.
All the rooms are great and serves a purpose, but sometimes you have to go through a bathroom to access the dining room. It might force the kids to wash their hands before dinner, but it is not necessarily the most clear layout.
Constellation
So we decided to build Constellation. First, we chose the name Constellation, because we want our DS to connect all our stakeholders together and if most of our user are stars in their field, it is only by connecting all of them together that we can bring efficiencies in the After Sales business.
So Constellation is the grammar of our visual language. It has logical rules to it to achieve 5 goals. We will describe those in next post. So Constellation will be gradually applied to all our products from AGORA PLUS to our website.
Not a “so do I “ initiative
Finally I wanted to make clear that Constellation is a deliberate and determined initiative. We do not start this journey because others have one, but because it is a vital step to what we want to become.
At Agora Sas, we know we have one of the best system in the world in the After Sales business, but we are intensely aware that our functions are so varied that it becomes tough to use. We also know we are terrible at communicating, because we are focused on doing rather than telling what we are doing. As our user community is tripling in 2019, we need to change and Constellation is the first brick of our new home.
AGORA PLUS V3
You will see in AGORA PLUS V3, that we try and apply Constellation. As we release more and more functions in AGORA PLUS V3, we will make Constellation better and more complete. Few times planets align as well as right now for Agora Sas. Our international expansion is the impulse that drives us to build a new AGORA PLUS, with the need to have a DS to design the most efficient product. And because our international users need a smaller sets of functions at the beginning, it gives us more steps to implement a completely new AGORA PLUS V3 and we have Constellation to lead the way.
We are glad you follow us and see you soon on this blog!