Helping teams keep track of everything
If you read the last edition of this newsletter, you know that we try to tackle persistent user problems through product development. Then, it was helping users better understand design system adoption.
Now, its helping teams understand everything happening with their design systems.
zeroheight is somewhat unique. It's used by smalls orgs where design system documentation is created by a single person in their free time. It's also used by large organizations like Uber, (check out their design system site), where its the full-time job of multiple folks to create a world-class documentation site.
For the latter, it can be hard to keep track of everything happening. After all, multiple people are editing and creating pages, leaving comments, and adding design and code assets.
The problem of feeling a bit lost about what's happening is exactly what we wanted to tackle with the zeroheight Dashboard. We wanted to give folks one place to find out what's happened recently and ideas on how to improve their styleguides.
What's happening in zeroheight?
The answers to this question live in the new Activity Feed. There, you can see everything that's happened in zeroheight including comments, newly created or edited pages, Styleguide Releases, and changes to themes. Basically, if its happened in zeroheight, you can find out about it there.
We think this will be pretty important for larger teams. Consider this: someone working on a design system team of six can leave for a vacation and come back to a handy report of everything that's happened while they're gone. Or, a design system manager can sort by editor to see everything each member of the team has accomplished recently.
There are tons of reasons folks need and want to see what's happening in one place and we're pretty proud to finally deliver that in the Activity Feed.
What was I working on again?
This one's small, but its important. When you come back to zeroheight after a hiatus, whether it's been 10 minutes or 10 days, we wanted it to be easier to pick up where you left off.
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On the top left, you can now see tiles that represent your recently visited pages. Perhaps, those tiles jog a memory of where you've been meaning to leave feedback for a member of your team or a page you've been getting around to editing for a while.
Either way, getting back into the flow of things should be a bit easier.
Where should we go next?
This is probably the biggest, and hardest, question we sought to help folks answer with the new Dashboard.
We kept hearing some variation of this: there's so much to do on my design system and I can't decide what I should tackle first.
There are two answers to this on the Dashboard. The first is on the top right where you'll see the number of pages that are missing a design or code asset. Our thinking here is fairly simple - if a page is missing design or code, adding that in is probably an easy way to improve your design system. Of course, not every page needs design or code, though, so you mark that so its no longer included in your count.
The second way to answer "Where should we go next?" lives in our new Recommendations section. There, you can see personalized ideas on how your team can improve the design system.
Some of those recommendations are prompts to update what you've already created. For example, if you haven't updated a page in six months or more, you'll see a nudge to make sure its still up to date.
Other recommendations are meant to be additive. For example, a team that hasn't added any design tokens may see a prompt to add them into their documentation. The idea here is that we want teams to create "complete" documentation. And sometimes, knowing what you've forgotten to include can be near impossible.
Ideally, everything in the Recommendations section will make it easy to come up with possible paths to improve your work. From there, you and the team can add a few cards to your project management tool, create a sprint, or whatever else makes you happy.
Let us know what you think
Product development is 100% iterative for us. If you have ideas on what you'd like to see in the Dashboard (or questions you'd like it to answer), fill in this survey or schedule a call with our Head of Product.
Whether you have feedback or not, we hope the Dashboard makes it easier for you to keep track of everything happening in zeroheight. And if you're not using zeroheight yet, sign up! The Dashboard is available on free accounts.