2019
REI · Map Creation
Cut Adventures trip-map production from 4–8 hours per map to a fraction of that. Migrated the team off Illustrator onto a Sketch + Abstract symbol system; saved roughly a full salary in production time.
The problem
REI Adventures was growing fast, and the design pipeline was nowhere close to keeping up. Specifically: every Adventures trip listing needed a custom map, and producing one took 4–8 hours in Illustrator, manually copying images between documents to keep visual consistency, because the working files weren't using a real symbol system.
One person was burning roughly a salary's worth of time per quarter making maps. Adventures was about to hire interns just to stay ahead of it.
What I built
I led the team's migration off the legacy Illustrator workflow and onto a unified Sketch + Abstract setup. Specifically:
- A symbol library for every map element (terrain, water, paths, POI markers, icons) so designers stopped re-drawing
- A process guide with SVG planet representations and step-by-step instructions, so the system was teachable to a new hire on day one
- Tied the Adventures team into REI's main business design system so their work shared visual language with the rest of the site
Outcomes
- Map creation went from 4–8 hours to a fraction of that, fast enough that the Adventures team didn't need the planned intern hires
- Saved roughly one full salary's worth of unbillable production time
- Adventures stopped being design-pipeline orphans and started shipping on the same cadence as the rest of the org
Role and stack
UI Designer. Tools: Sketch, Abstract. August 2019.
What I took from it
"Navigating a store isn't like Google maps, despite what people intuitively think. There are a lot of other variables to consider."
The biggest lever in design ops is almost always the boring one. Pick the worst recurring deliverable in your team's week, find out why it takes so long, and the answer is usually that the system underneath it is missing, not that the people are slow.