Collaborating Across Teams: The Wayfair Study Abroad Program
Homebase is Wayfair’s design system. It’s maintained day-to-day by the dedicated Homebase team, but it really belongs to all of us — our designers, engineers, and the product org at large. As such, we frequently collaborate across pods to work on new components, bring divergent layouts into parity with the system, and tackle problems that affect multiple teams.
One impactful way we collaborate with teammates outside of the Homebase team is through our “Study Abroad” program. Modeled after an engineering initiative of the same name, the program allows designers, content strategists, or UX researchers from any pod to join the Homebase team for one to four weeks. Participants work on projects that range from picking up existing tickets in our backlog to digging into broad research questions.
Two of our earliest participants tell their Study Abroad stories below.
Phaea: A11y Discovery Project
Phaea (Content Strategy Manager — Post-Purchase Products)
I spent two weeks in the study abroad program conducting a research project about which disabilities might affect our current customers.
Why and how did you end up in the program?
During a content strategy discussion about accessible design, we realized we could do more to optimize the site for customers with disabilities by leveraging disability and neurodiversity data. This data could help inform the direction of accessibility (a11y) design guidelines at Wayfair, so I volunteered to do it. Word got around about the project and the Product Design Director of Homebase asked me to be the first study abroad participant. I said yes!
What did you work on?
The project identified which disabilities may be most common amongst Wayfair users with the goal of better supporting accessible design on our site. Using resources including disabilitystatistics.com (U.S. Census data) and current Wayfair user demographic information, I was able to paint a broad picture of what disabilities might be most common for our customer, comparing for example, how many U.S. adults of a certain age reported a visual disability with the number of current Wayfair customers of the same age.
© 2020 Cornell DisabilityStatistics.org
I was also able to dedicate time to a deep dive into the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and layered in these recommendations to show how to serve our customers with disabilities — including myself! As a person with dyslexia, I know first hand how challenging it can be to interact with experiences designed for neurotypical users. This research project was a small step toward honing our sites to better support users like myself and the other 1.5M+ Wayfair customers that we estimate might also have disabilities.
The final report was sent out as a department-wide email and as an article in our internal knowledge database for anyone to reference as needed. The report was received well and put to use across multiple departments. Even better, it allowed me to connect with our internal accessibility employee resource group and engineering teams already invested in making the site more accessible and inclusive. I was able to get direct feedback from content experts to improve the language of the report, as well as build deeper relationships with like-minded coworkers.
What was most valuable about the chance to “study abroad” on a different design team?
Studying abroad on the amazing Homebase team made me feel even more invested in the organization beyond my normal allocation. Having the chance to focus on just one passion project for two weeks was icing on the cake — especially since my work will have a larger impact on the experience design team, and hopefully Wayfair as a whole.
Thao: Building Guidelines for a Component
Thao (Product Designer — Best in Class: Complete)
I participated in the study abroad program for one week and worked on a proposal for a Homebase container component.
Why and how did you end up in the program?
As someone who transitioned my career to Product Design from Merchandising a year ago, I decided to set a career goal in 2019 to become a more efficient designer by nailing down the hard skills (tools, principles, software, etc.). When I was reviewing this goal with my manager, she advised me to keep an eye out for the study abroad program with Homebase, our design system. With the encouragement from my manager and teammates, I signed up for one week to contribute to the Homebase backlog!
What did you work on?
As a part of Wayfair’s ongoing refinement of our on-site visual language, the Homebase team realized that our card component is often being used just for its grouping functionality — not for its navigational functionality as it is intended to be used. To solve this problem, I was tasked with creating guidelines for a new component specifically for grouping content in a non-interactive space, the container. The container component sounds simple, yet it is heavily used across multiple layouts. Getting the guidelines right would make a big impact!
Caption: Without a container component, teams were using our card component incorrectly, or creating their own local solutions instead of using design system-managed components
To get started, I learned about the process of contributing a new component to our library, which resources to look into, and what to consider along the way. From there, I conducted research on design systems across multiple industries and narrowed my focus to 15 design systems with a similar component to a container. In the research, I recorded the component’s description, dos and don’ts, hierarchy, accessibility best practices, and how the component was different from other components, such as cards. Then, after getting feedback from my teammates on Homebase, I transferred the research into guidelines.
Caption: competitor research of containers from other design systems
What was most valuable about the chance to “study abroad” on a different design team? By the end of this study abroad experience, I had learned how to design for modularity and scalability and honed my design thinking. I came to appreciate all of the details and effort that go into developing a component even more. I also found this was a great opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and day-to-day bubble to learn how other teams operate.
