Internship in Design System Finland team

I started as an intern in Telia Design System in May 2020. I joined the team building and maintaining Telia's Finnish Design System Gaia. When I joined the team, the team was switching from Sketch to using Figma, so one of my first tasks was to help rebuilt components that got broken from the switch. At the same time, questions from our users about component usage were flooding in, so we started building a website and making documentation about each component.

After my summer internship, I continued maintaining the Design System Figma library and generating new documentation as an employee. In the fall, we worked on implementing new brand elements, emphasizing the need for a seamless update process facilitated by the Design System.

Employee in global Design System team

At the same time, our team embraced the idea of a Telia-wide Design System, uniting with Swedish colleagues to create a global Design System. Opting to be code-agnostic, we aimed to enhance component usage and accessibility, while also fostering collaboration across Telia countries. With these goals in mind, we started creating the Voca DS. Creating the Figma components was a team effort between the teams designers, with one designing a component and documentation, after which the others checked the technical details and the validity of the documentation. In the end, I got the responsibility of maintaining the Figma library and approving the new components. At the same time, I was working on improving the collaboration of designers across the different countries.

In the end, I was part of a team that created multiple accessible components with full documentation, that were tested and used in different teams and projects across the Telia countries.