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Soundtrap turns tables with a new roadmap after Belka’s Design System Audit
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Belka’s Department of Instant Hits is proud to announce that Soundtrap’s design system has been thoroughly audited and a design system roadmap is underway with a new component library.
Soundtrap’s cloud-based platform helps musicians, podcasters and educators create, edit and collaborate on the music and podcasts they’re proud of.
After being acquired by Spotify in 2017, Soundtrap was resold to its owners in 2023 with a streamlined team for the platform and website. They’d been using their design system, Mango, for 6 years.
“With management changes and a smaller team, we were facing significant challenges,” says Maria Tessarolo, Product Designer at Soundtrap. “Our design and development teams were misaligned, with outdated and new components mixed together. We had some ideas on how to approach these challenges, but we needed guidance.”
Belka was only too happy to help.
How is your design system doing?
To diagnose the main problems with the design system and coach Soundtrap towards the solution, Belka ran a Design System Audit.
“We conducted one-on-one interviews, analyzed the library codebase and files, and surveyed the design and development teams,” says Mattia Marinangeli, design system expert at Belka. “This helped us understand how the team is really doing and how the design system is performing in practice.”
The results of this analysis were organized through Belka’s 5 Pillars method.
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“A simple framework like the 5 Pillars was incredibly valuable as it provided a common language. This is so important, especially when communicating with management who aren't familiar with design system terms,” confirmed Leonardo Lanzinger, Senior Product Designer at Soundtrap.
Maria, product designer at Soundtrap, agreed; “Both the Vision & Plan and Value pillars were super insightful to me. I often focus on the technical aspects and feel unsure how the design system should align with organizational goals.”
Coaching to play the best playlists
From the analysis, it was clear to Belka that the component library required significant updates. Soundtrap’s Fredrik Lind, Senior Engineer, and Lorenzo Dolfi, Product Designer, were up to the task.
“But our guidance didn’t stop there,” interjects Maria Sole Biondi, Designer at Belka. “Through a series of workshops, we helped Soundtrap identify goals and priorities to create a roadmap for the future of Mango.”
This led to creating a pilot team for the new component library, involving both designers and developers.
“Belka's approach to evaluating our design system principles and conducting workshops was exactly what we needed,” says Fredrik Lind, senior engineer at Soundtrap.
Their design team is in complete agreement. “Belka helped us connect the design system roadmap with the product roadmap. Thanks to that, we managed to get leadership on-board with new initiatives,” says Leonardo, Product Designer at Soundtrap
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Ready for the next big hit!
Coaching enables practice. “We’ll stay in touch with the Soundtrap team and look forward to seeing how the design system components evolve,” concludes Anas Araid, design system developer at Belka. “Hearing that they’ll boost their design system is music to our ears!”
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Related from Belka:
· Do you need a design system audit?
· Why your first attempt at a design system is likely to fail
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