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 lead 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 Design System. This systems was based on the structure of the current all-of-government Ripple Design System but completely reworked to match the new Brand Guidelines and redefined to meet our unique technical requirements.

The Strategy

We worked from the ground up to completely redefine the Ripple Design System, 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 utilised to significantly accelerate the design and development process.

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 benefit was the creation of a standardised registration and log in process, which previously took 2 weeks, was 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 signifcanlty more consistent, easier to build and a high level of quality, especially when paired with a new set of frameworks and guidelines we developed to support the new Design System.