Icon Library: Internal team

Understanding the Internal Team process

But first…A Win I’m Really Proud Of

In early 2017, new to this particular team in the company, I noticed the set of icons authors had to choose from were lacking in diversity. This was most evident when searching through our category of “people” icons. I took initiative and started creating an entirely new library of people that was more inclusive.

During this inclusivity audit

I was able to dig in and understand what it took for the visual team to create and manage a large library set of images.

I gained first-hand knowledge of the process and met with all design team members to gain their perspectives and insights. I wanted to create the best experience for the design team and any contractors who may come into the process.

Developing a Workflow

While there was a team of in-house designers that were ultimately responsible for cataloging and creating icons, the design portion was a task the team wanted to scale. For this we hired 4 contractors to test out scalability.

I assessed the initial workflow looking for spots in the current process that could cause confusion. I then created a new workflow for the contractors to follow. I took their feedback and made any changes as necessary until it was concise.

Working Within Technical limitations

Assigning keywords to our icons so they were searchable in the library was done individually in Lightroom and we had no set process to follow. They would typically be given terms as they were made. This was fine when the library was smaller with under 200 icons, but it was not scalable in the long run. We needed a way to keep track of all keywords for every icon and we needed easy access to that.

developing a system

The ideal solution for our library on the designer end as well as on the developer side of things would be a CMS. That option was not available to the team at the time. I was able to come up with a process that gave us access to all keywords as well as the corresponding visual.

To do this, I had to figure out a few things first.

• I needed to fully understand how icons were added to our library on the back-end. To do this, I worked with developers.

• I needed to export all current keywords into one location.

• I needed an efficient way to assign those keywords in Lightroom.

It took some time, but I developed a set of categorized spreadsheets that worked out well for the team.

My main goals:

1. Creating a process leaving minimal room for errors and mistakes that would multiply down the line

2. Ensuring all keywords were in one location and could be exported quickly to any CMS system when needed