In 2017, I began working full-time on what was up to that point a side project. Waxvine provides a content management platform specifically designed to support UX and UI experts and the content they create.
The idea for creating a hosted solution for design systems was based on my work creating and managing the design standards at Expeditors. It took a dedicated team to manage the standards which applied across multiple teams. I wanted to create a solution that would reduce the cost of implementation and maintenance.
Before diving into development, I spent time talking with fellow designers to determine viability and requirements. Along the way, I learned that my original concepts were too ambitious and what was really needed was a simple way to quickly document design standards that are shareable with teammates. Once I was able to partner with the right developer, work began on determining the technical underpinnings from data storage to the front-end solution. We built a first version that was fantastically horrible but it's what led to the current, fantastically great version.
Documentation like style guides have content requirements that go beyond what a baseline CMS provides. Since the appliction was developed using Facebook's JavaScript library React, we also used Draft (their rich-text editor framework) as a foundation for our solution. This allowed us to give users the ability to add fancy things like color swatches.
Although there was no explicit requirement for a mobile version of the app, I wanted to ensure that it displayed well on smaller devices.