Improving engagement and adoption through clearer documentation and better tooling
Overview
ACE (Ansarada common elements) is Ansarada’s design system, created to unify how products are designed and built across the platform.
Despite having a strong component library, engagement with ACE was low. Designers and developers found the documentation difficult to navigate, unclear to interpret, and time consuming to contribute to.
This project focused on improving how teams discovered, understood and used the design system. The goal was not just better documentation, but a system that actively supported faster and more consistent product development.
The problem
Feedback from designers and engineers revealed a consistent pattern. ACE existed, but it was hard to use.
Teams struggled with:
- Finding the right components quickly
- Understanding when and how components should be used
- Contributing updates without significant manual effort
- Trusting documentation as a reliable source of truth
As a result, engagement dropped and teams began working around the system instead of with it. This reduced efficiency and introduced inconsistency across the product.
Vision
We wanted ACE to feel effortless to use. A world-class design system should enable teams to:
- Implement design decisions confidently
- Contribute improvements easily
- Understand the design language without friction
Beyond internal impact, we also saw an opportunity to share ACE publicly as part of Ansarada’s design maturity, helping attract designers and strengthen brand credibility within the design community.
Goals
- Increase contributions to ACE by 25 percent
- Address usability issues within documentation
- Improve consistency across the platform
- Reduce friction between design and development workflows
Assumptions
Most users would access ACE from desktop environments during active design or development work. This shaped how navigation, scanning and discoverability were prioritised.
Approach
The work began by understanding existing efforts and building on them rather than starting from scratch.
Before I joined, the DesignOps team had already run internal workshops, surveys and ideation sessions to understand how ACE was being used. Their findings created a strong foundation and allowed us to move quickly into problem solving.
1. Understand adoption barriers
Research revealed two major blockers:
- Component documentation was manual, slow and error-prone
- Usage guidance was unclear, especially around interaction decisions such as when to use similar components in different contexts
The issue was not the components themselves. It was the system supporting them.
2. Learn from best-in-class design systems
We conducted comparative research across leading design systems, evaluating them based on:
- Ease of navigation
- Searchability
- Component discoverability
- Clarity of documentation for both designers and developers
This helped define practical benchmarks rather than designing in isolation.
3. Explore solutions through rapid prototyping
Low-fidelity concepts were quickly mapped to explore navigation structures and interaction ideas. Once promising directions emerged, high-fidelity interactive prototypes were created using existing ACE documentation as a base.
User testing sessions asked participants to complete realistic tasks while thinking aloud, allowing us to observe:
- Where users hesitated
- What information they expected to see
- How easily they could locate components
Insights and opportunities were documented collaboratively for iteration.
4. Introduce Orbit
The solution extended beyond visual redesign. This work led to the creation of Orbit, a new documentation engine powering ACE React documentation.
Orbit automated the generation of component documentation directly from code and development environments. This reduced manual maintenance and ensured documentation stayed aligned with implementation.
Alongside Orbit, we refined existing documentation to better communicate:
- When to use components
- Where they belong
- How they behave in context
The documentation experience also received a subtle visual refresh to improve readability and navigation.
Solution
A redesigned documentation experience supported by Orbit, enabling:
- Automated component documentation
- Improved navigation and discoverability
- Clearer usage guidance for designers and developers
- Faster contribution workflows
The design system shifted from a static reference to an actively maintained product.
Outcome
Orbit MVP launched internally alongside updated ACE documentation.
The improvements helped:
- Reduce friction in adopting the design system
- Improve confidence in component usage
- Strengthen alignment between design and engineering
- Establish a scalable foundation for future system growth
The project also positioned ACE as something worth sharing externally, reinforcing Ansarada’s design capability.
Next steps
- Expand documentation for design tokens and patterns
- Continue iterating based on team feedback
- Grow ACE as both an internal tool and external design asset
What I learned
Design systems succeed when they support real workflows, not ideal ones.
Improving adoption required understanding behaviour, reducing effort, and aligning tooling with how teams actually work.
Sometimes the most impactful design work is invisible. It removes friction so teams can focus on solving customer problems instead of navigating process.
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