Ripple Extended Design System

The Context

The Department of Education's Digital Innovation Branch was set to design and develop a large selection of new systems in 2025 and 2026, This required a new set of frameworks and guidelines to be developed so that we could maintain a high level of quality while also developing at a faster pace that previously possible. I led the selection and creation of these new frameworks.

As these frameworks were being developed the Department of Education also launched a new set of Brand Guidelines, requiring us to style all new systems to suit this new look and feel.

The Task

To allow for the creation of this new set of large and complex systems, along with the new frameworks and best practice guidelines, I defined and developed (with support and feedback from the whole UX team) a new, reshaped Ripple Design System, custom to the Department of Education. This system was based on the structure of the current all-of-government Ripple Design System but was completely reworked to match the new Brand Guidelines and redefined to meet our unique technical requirements.

Although the current Design System was of a high standard and met the requirements for website builds. We needed to find ways to acccelerate the use of these components, align them with the new branding and also elevate them to support standardised process flows.

The Strategy

We worked from the ground up, naming it Ripple Extended. First we restyled the hundreds of components to match the new branding, then we defined new patterns of components and then combined these to produce page templates.

Page templates were chosen based on frequency of use, such as form pages, landing pages and dashboads.

While developing this Design System and set of page templates we also defined standardised process flows and user journeys, such that when a new digital experience was created, standardised templates and process flows were reused to significantly accelerate the design and development process.

We also actioned a set of governance processes around this reworked Design System, included weekly review sessions, component change request forms and design reviews for new components or updates.

The Impact

With the launch of our new Ripple Extended Design System, UX designs and the definition of process flows moved from weeks and months to days.

One notable example was the creation of a standardised registration and log in process, what previously took 2 weeks to map out for each project was now reduced to 2 days per project, a significant time and cost saving.

With our new set of components, patterns, pages and process flows, system builds are now signifcanlty more consistent, easier to build and of a high level of quality, especially when paired with the new sets of frameworks and guidelines we developed to support the new Design System.