Content design system

How I created Momentum’s content design system

GM Financial is General Motors' captive auto lender. We finance vehicle loans and leases, as well as electric vehicle charging tools. Our products are used by consumers and dealers across North America and Latin America.

As the company's sole content designer, my job was to create content guidance for our private design system (DS), Momentum. I built this content design system (CDS), within the DS, which lives in Zeroheight.

System consumers:

Product designers who need content guidance at their fingertips
Engineers who fill gaps during the development process
Marketing writers who need guidance writing for the user experience
Future UX writers who need the clarity and guardrails of a CDS

Together with the DS team, I sketched a picture of what Momentum content guidance might look like. We serve 5 brands and quickly understood that guidance must be agnostic to start. This agnostic foundation sets us up to add brand-specific guidance later.

My process

Choose tools

Since we use Zeroheight, I added a Content tab to our Foundations section to place content at the heart of the DS. And I used both Miro and Figma to compile and order my research, making it easy to socialize my findings and analysis.

Gather information

Conducting research into other DSs and CDSs initially took several months (and is ongoing). I bookmarked a healthy list of design systems. Every DS has a nugget (or more) of wisdom to share. I took many notes when looking at superstar systems like Spectrum, Atlassian, Material, USWDS, and Carbon, as well as smaller ones like Morningstar, Lightning, and Goldman-Sachs. This audit often led to a GMF-centered take on a common theme.

Connect with others

I connected with many people throughout this process, including:

Product designers — I ran small workshops to understand how they use (or want to use) selected components.
Copy editors — I presented content design best practices to understand how we can align.
Marketers — I gathered intel on how they write about things, what patterns they use.
The DS community — Early in this process I joined a DS weekly meetup called The Question. These weekly meetings give me insight into how DS owners, engineers, and contributors think and work.
Colleagues in the CDS world — I reached out to other CDS practitioners via group meetups and on LinkedIn.

Build it

Our CDS includes 2 parts:

Content design best practices (voice and tone guidance, grammar and style notes, and writing for accessibility and translation) — Completed
Component content guidance — Ongoing

Part 1

The needs I considered include:

Content design primer — its purpose and goals
Clarity on voice and tone when writing for the user experience
Easy to use accessibility guidance
Clear examples for writers to follow

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Part 2

This is ongoing. I build component-level content guidance as time permits. As I work, I continue to discuss needs with the DS team, and hold small working sessions to see how specific components are being used across our brands and teams.

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Take feedback

Given I’m currently the only content designer, equipping others to write for the digital experience is paramount. Only a week after launch of part 1, we got positive feedback from:

UX leadership —
- “Efficiency is a huge benefit that stands out to me, but this could align with all our 5 goals. This also marks the most successful Momentum collaboration with any department (aside from Engineering).”
- “These brand agnostic guidelines increase efficiency and provide product teams and writers a set of standards and a source of truth for digital content.”
International Operations team — “We’re using this already! It’s so helpful to have content guidance for things big and small.”
Product designers — “Just wanted to let you know I reference our content guidance very frequently. It’s so helpful. Thank you so much."

Move forward

As I continue to add component-level content guidance, I am part of conversations about Momentum's use and growth. Asking Engineering questions in our Teams channel or presenting new work in feedback sessions gives Content a voice is didn't have before. I socialize the CDS to drive adoption. This earned trust is a big win that makes the DS better — and our products better for users.