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Phoenix

Phoenix is a scalable design system for Flybuys—Australia’s most loved loyalty program. The system streamlines workflows for digital designers and ensures brand consistency across a high volume of campaigns.

Role

Creative Design Manager

Year

2022

Project

Phoenix

Organisation

Flybuys

In 2021 Flybuys went through a brand refresh, positioning Flybuys as 'Savvy is the new sexy', bringing with it a new look and feel for the brand. Flybuys also onboarded new partners to the program, including Officeworks and Bunnings. With the number of partners and campaigns growing, the ability for Flybuys to communicate a consistent brand experience was slowly being diluted. The workload for the design team was increasing and Flybuys needed a way to improve efficiencies and delivery a high-volume of quality work.

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The Challenge: streamlining growth and adapting to change  

As the Flybuys Creative Team expanded and the brand direction evolved, it became clear that the design process needed a major overhaul. The team was facing inefficiencies and inconsistencies across a high-volume of marketing campaigns. Recognising this, I spearheaded the transition from Sketch to Figma, conducting creative workshops to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement.

Through collaboration with the team, I developed modular components to elevate email, social and web designs and built a comprehensive design system in Figma that streamlined workflows and ensured brand consistency across all campaigns.

Refining experience through testing

I worked with the Customer Experience team to test designs with members focusing on member engagement, messaging comprehension and improving user experience. Designs were iterated upon by conducting a/b testing and analysing results.

Designing for an ecosystem

Flybuys has over 20 partners, each bringing with them their own brand guidelines, assets and styles. The system had to be set up in a way that allowed for Flybuys' distinct brand to shine whilst integrating branding from it's partners. The system was set-up to leverage multiple brand libraries that could be brought in to a Flybuys templated environment allowing designers to create designs within a Flybuys structure whilst leveraging partner assets and creative to deliver engaging co-branded campaigns.

Bridging design and development

Working closely with the front-end development team, I gained their support for the project to transition from their familiar system to the new modular system. I provided clear guidelines to ensure seamless implementation and used Litmus to test email designs across platforms. Through regular syncs, we resolved technical challenges and aligned both design and development needs, resulting in a consistent, robust, and well-tested system built on collaboration.

Creating modular components

Working closely with the creative team to establish the visual direction of the design system, I developed the foundational elements, including brand colors, typography, and brand assets. These components served as the basis for the system. From there, we crafted key elements such as buttons, timelines, headers, and footers to create the main components. By assembling these elements, we designed modular components that support various applications, including articles, banners, and steps. Each module is equipped with dynamic assets and text driven by personal data, enhancing user engagement and experience.

Project management

Managing the Phoenix design system project, I structured the process into clear phases within a timeline. This project was a collaborative effort that engaged multiple departments across the business. I developed comprehensive guidelines around the new system, significantly improving the onboarding experience for design, commercial, and operations teams.

It has enabled the Creative Team to work collaboratively and seamlessly, even as it more than doubled in size and proved essential when onboarding a team of offshore designers, allowing them to quickly integrate into workflows and contribute to campaigns without disruption. The design system’s scalability has fostered smoother collaboration across the expanded team, ensuring high-quality outputs while maintaining efficiency.

As a result of this new design system, Flybuys saw an increase in efficiencies, enabling the creative team to take on more partners (Officeworks and Bunnings). The design system allowed the team to deliver engaging experiences tailored to each partner but also ensures a consistent design presence across all Flybuys digital channels.

Role

I initiated and led Project Phoenix to create a scalable design system that would equip the design team with the tools, assets, systems and documentation to set them up for success as we journeyed into this new chapter of Flybuys.

Managed a creative design team of digital designers.

Moved Creative Services team from Sketch to Figma.

Built and maintained a design system for the entire Creative Services team for email campaigns, social, web, app and display.

Onboarded and managed offshore digital design team of seven (for the Coles and Wesfarmer portfolios).

Created company-wide digital guidelines and resources.