The design system that failed
Sometimes good intentions still take a wrong turn
Last semester, I had some grand ideas for the design of Elon’s student news organization, Elon News Network (ENN), where I’m the design chief. Earlier in the year, the ENN staff heard a lot about how we needed to be a digital-first organization, so I was thinking about how to get more graphics online. Our copy team had an on-call system where reporters would tag the copy editors on Trello, our story management system. The copy editors would then read the article before it was published online. This made me wonder if we could create a similar system where designers could be prompted to make graphics accompanying every story.
Of course, there was a slight hitch. No designers or other organization members really understood how to write HTML to make graphics, so I thought the design team could take a different route and upload graphics as static images instead. Not all of the designers had access to the Adobe Creative Suite outside of our physical newsroom, so we used the online website Canva. I created templates for cut-ins, pull quotes, basic infographics and more, and assigned all of my designers to a certain day where they would make graphics for all the articles that got uploaded to the website. The proposed workflow was something like this: a designer would get tagged on a Trello card when a copy editor did, the graphics would be created and added to each story and then the story would be published on the site.
Unfortunately, there were a few problems with this system. First, the section editors usually forgot to tag the designers on Trello, so designers wouldn’t know what stories they were assigned to make graphics for. This was a result of some poor communication on my end on how the system worked, as well as the section editors simply forgetting to tag designers. Since the proposed workflow didn’t quite catch on, I often had to go online and manually check which stories were uploaded, then text my designers to make the corresponding graphics. Additionally, if there were typos or factual errors within the graphics themselves, section editors would just delete the images because they couldn’t make the edits themselves. Despite the inconvenience of this overall process, my designers and I managed to keep up with this process for well over a month.
The on-call design system came to a slow halt after winter break because I simply never mentioned it to my designers again. I didn’t want to admit it, but I just desperately wanted to stop using something that didn’t seem to work for anybody. It was disappointing because the design system was created to address our website’s need for online graphics. Unfortunately, my solution had only exhausted the designers who were responsible for making them and the section editors who didn’t quite understand them. The system didn’t fail in the sense that it went up in huge flames and our executive director condemned the design team for eternity. Instead, it was the kind of failure that comes from weeks and weeks of exhaustion and annoyance at a flawed system that had good intentions.
But we’ve moved on since then. After break, I decided to channel energy into figuring out how to edit the HTML on ENN’s site to create a more sustainable graphics solution. With a little bit of luck (and a whole lot of Googling), I figured out how to create graphics in this way — and they actually looked good! I chatted more with our online editor and instead of having my designers try to keep up with all of the incoming articles, we decided it would be easier for the reporters to learn how to edit the HTML of the design elements themselves. In addition to being easier, the process also allowed all of the reporters to gain experience with HTML, a valuable skill to have no matter the person’s major.
Now that my designers aren’t trying to keep up with every article on the website, they have more time to focus on making infographics and illustrations throughout the week that can get published both in the paper and online. This process contributes more valuable information and aesthetic appeal than a poorly rendered JPEG of red text.
Ultimately, what I learned is the importance of waiting. It’s important to thoroughly explore your options, and not to be satisfied with the easy or first solution. If I had spent just a little more time at the beginning of the school year on HTML, I would have saved me and my designers a long headache that included entirely too much Canva. Even if you try to start a new system, it’s important to recognize when the annoyance and inconvenience of it isn’t worth the final product.
Sometimes the best of intentions can take a downward spiral. Sometimes good ideas have poor execution. Sometimes the reward isn’t worth the effort. But learning from your failure can propel you in the right direction. And that’s what matters.
Students did you know you can join the Society for News Design for as little as $5 a month?
