UX at Wells Fargo: Building an Enterprise-Scale Inclusive Design System

For over four years, Kristina, Gerard, David, Mindy, and Sarah have worked together (and with a cast of hundreds) to design, test, and deliver an inclusive design system for large-scale, multi-channel enterprise use. From experience strategy to design patterns to code frameworks to reference documentation, this cross-functional team has balanced a universe of complexity.

Setting sponsor and stakeholder expectations, aligning efforts with organizational objectives and customer needs, navigating resistance to adoption, and managing the ever-increasing scope of support that a growing design system requires – these are but a few of the needs and challenges they’ve encountered during their quest for design system nirvana. The good news? They learned a bunch of lessons along the way. For every advantage design systems offer, there are, naturally, new puzzles to solve.

These intrepid design system advocates will share their journey and offer insights and recommendations to inform your design system adventures!

Panel Bios

Panelist: Kristina Ross is the design manager, experience strategist, and frequent storyteller for Wells Fargo’s Atlas Framework Design Team. Kris got her start designing and coding for the Web back when Mosaic was the browser, and has led numerous user-centered design engagements for a wide variety of complex, customer-facing applications for healthcare, online education, IT, and financial services. 

Panelist: David Hom is a college developer reject who then turned to his passion of mathematics and education. David is now a product manager at Wells Fargo, where he collaborates with a community of internal teams to help grow and evolve the Atlas Framework, a component library of reusable, responsive, and accessible UI components.

Panelist: Gerard K. Cohen loves front end engineering so much that he is on a mission to make sure that the web is inclusive to all users, making rich internet experiences available for all. He believes a great user experience includes performance and accessibility. 

Panelist: Mindy Madson is a comic book fanatic who found her way into UX because that’s where the real superheroes are.   She has spent the past 2 decades as a web design producer masterminding UX projects with cunning resourcefulness and occasional brilliance. 

Moderator: Sarah Bellrichard currently leads the large and growing Customer Experience Design (CXD) team within the Digital Solutions for Business (DS4B) group at Wells Fargo, creating easy to use and learnable user experiences for diverse types of web applications across multiple delivery channels and device types. 

This is the Agenda for the day:

6-6:30 - Snacks and Networking

6:30 - 7:30 - Panel and Q&A

7:30 to 9ish - More snacks and more networking!

Sponsored by Galvanize and Justinmind

Galvanize is the premier dynamic learning community for technology. Our community is where people and companies with the guts and smarts to create real-world change congregate and inspire each other. Across our 7 beautifully designed urban campuses, we offer a unique combination of education, workspace and networking.To learn more about Galvanize SF and membership, visit: www.galvanize.com or request a tour here.

Justinmind is the most powerful high-fidelity prototyping tool for web and mobile apps. It allows you to define web and app solutions by securely integrating requirements management with design, and streamline the communication of software requirements across multiple business teams.