RAUL
The RAUL Design System is RealPage's enterprise design system. It supports complex workflows while allowing customization to meet specific business needs, enabling seamless integration, compliance, and long-term maintainability.
Clear documentation and governance structures enable teams to adopt and implement the system effectively while maintaining compliance with industry regulations
Company RealPage
Industry Property Management
Role Senior Designer
Features
The Design System
A well-structured design system ensures consistency, scalability, and efficiency by establishing strong foundations, reusable components, and clear documentation. Adoption and governance drive its success, while continuous iteration keeps it adaptable to evolving needs. By prioritizing accessibility and maintainability, a design system enhances user experience and streamlines development for long-term growth.
System Audit and Preparation
The RAUL design system was unorganized and had very little standards when it came to how designers and developers should be using the system. There was no cohesive design across products due to designers being in pods across the company.
Once the design team moved into a wholistic group, leaders started to evaluate the system and what improvements could be done. The design team evaluated the system, updated components, wrote new detailed documentation and delivered to engineering to develop. This required many conversations and QA sessions with design and development to align.
Define the Foundation
The foundation of a design system ensures consistency and scalability by defining key principles, guidelines, and reusable patterns. This includes setting standards for typography, colors, spacing, and iconography. These core elements create a strong base for building accessible and cohesive components across the system.
Develop the Component Library
The goal of a robust Figma component library is to create cohesion across teams and decrease in rogue components, with a faster pace of iterative and early design work. The governance process I established created more opportunities for designers to work together, getting early visibility into how the system was emerging across the product.
Each component was made with a purpose and was created to allow designers to focus on the UX instead of the UI of their project. All components follow a common pattern and have templates to create consistency across the design team for the platform. All designers understand the system and can communicate the purpose and usage of each component with any development team.
Some components are very complex with many components within them making a common pattern.
There are far more options within this one component than pictured above.
Documentation
Clear documentation is essential for the successful adoption of a design system. It includes component usage guidelines, best practices, and behaviors, ensuring consistency across teams. Examples and detailed instructions help developers and designers implement components correctly. Versioning and release notes keep developers informed about updates and improvements, making the system easy to maintain and scale.
A design system is never static and it evolves with product needs. Regular audits help refine components for better performance, accessibility, and usability. Expanding the library with new components, optimizing for speed, and allowing customization ensure long-term scalability. Encouraging feedback and contributions from teams keeps the system relevant and adaptable as design trends and technology evolve.
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Design system documentation website where designers and developers come to learn.