Directions № 3

COVID Alert was an exposure notification app delivered by the Canadian Digital Service for the Government of Canada. Part of this team, I notably created a set of tools and design principles that supported delivery of the app.

Building an app in 45 days doesn't allow for much iteration and visual maturity. After the launch of the app, and for its entire lifecycle, I continued iterating on design tools. I listened to the developers, designers and policy analysts to figure out their needs and support them. At the same time, I continued to iterate and perfect the app's visual language.

The design tools were mainly centred around Figma. We would document and organise design decisions through clear design artifacts like screen flows. The Figma was organized to cater the needs of the team, and orient the many contributing disciplines. Choosing Figma also strengthened our a11y processes: Interfaces and components were designed to be accessible before handing them off to developers and testers.

The three toned palette was particularly challenging. My objective was to maximize contrast and simplify colour choices. More about the deign process in the case study.

I also drew many icons for the app, including the app icon, hand pictograms and interface icons.

This work was done with the Canadian Digital Service.

Notify is an app for Canada's public servants. Our small bu mighty team is continuously improving this Web app. Launched in 2020, I joined the team in 2021 and have since delivered big and small changes in almost every nook of this app.

Part of my role includes supporting the delivery of features that have a clear, modern and coherent visual language. Starting with a Figma library, I cloned the components that we had in code. By doing this, I was able to document and identify areas of improvement with colour, typography, components and patterns. This documentation was then looped back into the code, and slowly improved and stabilized the visual language.

Some of my additions include an illustration set that make the interface more welcoming and less serious. The typography selection extends Noto Sans, used on Canadaa.ca, by adding the Display family member for headings.

Platform is a set of tools, like Notify, made to enable public servants to deliver modern services. Starting from Notify, the goal was to group design efforts to organize and align ono a visual language for the platform's apps.

Colour tokens are designed to help choose a colour. I did this by finding a balance between contrast and number. There are 5 shades per colour. The shades are designed in the LCH colour space, so colour combinations are predictable across the entire palette.

The kit also contains dimension tokens to be used within atomic components or as layout spacing. I've also created two icon systems to be used to identify different apps within the platform – Notify and Forms now – and others later.

In collaboration with Sam Sadasivan and Carolyn Connors.

I created the Sans Atout design system in my spare time. It helped me design a tabletop multiplayer card games. The system extends Chakra UI and the Reasonable Colours system.

The Reasonable colours really helped me create vibrant and lively visual language. In addition, I also selected a large variety of typefaces that somehow work well together.

Tartans and avatars are randomly generated

The main goal of this project was also to draw sets of playing cards. I've started with the four suits, and followed with some card art. In the future, there will be an opportunity to draw figures.

The design system powers the multiplayer game platform 52 Cartes. The beta version contains a game named Huit in French, but could be extended with many more card games and languages.

Time has gone by, and projects I'm involved with keep following the same direction. In the past five years, I've been focused on crafting strong and coherent design language within different projects. Everything that I craft becomes documentation. I struggle to take space and prefer to listen. When I speak, I try to be as convincing and knowledgable as possible. Its tough. I've been trying to push the boundaries of my craft outwards and encouraging my organization to be more courageous with design leadership.

I've learned through my experiences that my craft is based on an efficient collaboration. I also observed that a product team is in fact very similar to a group of users with specific needs. I can better contribute to the product by listening and supporting them

With COVID Alert, our team embarked on a journey of unknowns. We were a Web team doing a native app. We were eager and capable. In this project I was able to refine my collaboration model that I would push on later projects.

The platform design kit was more ambitious, and eventually stopped. At its core, the idea was to craft a modern design language to bring harmony to the platform services we were building.

To let go for me meant to focus on personal projects that brought me joy, and boosted my motivation. Sans Atout is a project where I went as wild as I could. As much as I am happy with the outcome, this project still feels very lonely. There is a lot of work to be done still.

I'm very much comfortable at my desk crafting design ideas, but I'm also wanting to reach further and inspire other designers within something bigger. Something I haven't yet been able to do. I hope my next challenge will bring more collaboration, but also stronger design leadership.