Paste: Twilio's design system

Twilio Paste:

Scaling content design with design systems

Content design and design systems - name a more iconic duo 🤝

I've contributed patterns and component guidance to Paste based on some the most regularly requested topics: error states, empty states, and buttons.

The Challenge

As the only content designer at Twilio, I'm in charge of making sure our content remains consistent and exceptional. With consistently constrained resources, design systems are a great way to scale content design.

It's tempting to think that more content = good content. Not necessarily. While I began by adding basic content guidelines to Paste, it wasn't gaining the traction I had hoped. This was a good lesson in matching content to user needs.

The Solution

So - to the research! I began surveying Paste users (product designers, product managers, and software engineers) to find out what type of content they needed help with. I also studied my inbound requests for themes and placed them into buckets (I had a good idea, but wanted to make sure I had the data to back up my anecdotes).

The results from the survey matched up perfectly with the support requests I'd received directly, and gave me a clear direction for where Twilio builders wanted most support.

The Results

And it worked! Pages that featured content guidance saw consistently more visits after guidance was added compared to before. 📈

Empty states: +58% QoQ

Buttons: +43% QoQ

Error states: +101% QoQ(!)

I've also had great direct feedback from Paste users, who've told me how much time and anxiety the guidance saves them. As a bonus, all components on Paste meet WCAG 2.1 AA standards, making it even easier to build accessibly.

So what next?

A content designer's work is never really finished. I've been happy to push updates when users ask me about gaps in the guidance. It's like fitting missing pieces of a puzzle. For example, what illustrations should go along with different empty state messages?

All of this is a work in progress - so expect to see more guidance added regularly. You can see all this and more at paste.twilio.design.

Some more maybe?