CLIENT

United States Space Force

MY ROLE

Design, Branding, Frontend Web Development

OVERVIEW

The United States Space Force is the service branch of the U.S. Armed Forces and the world's only dedicated independent space force. The DoD reached out to us to build their first internal service portal for Space Force employees and service members.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Build a design system for the USSF portal that focuses on accessibility, and usability. The design system should be easily adapted to other Space Force systems and applications. Cut down on designer time and assist engineers by building the frontend components in Storybook. The USSF portal design system’s Storybook is available online.

VISION

The original vision of the design system was to pull colors, themes, and ideas from technology and space, without being "just another dark space website". The brand colors were picked from colors found in the galaxy, and named appropriately (mars red, aurora, ultraviolet, and cosmic latte for example). The design system was built on top of the USWDS design system, who's react library Truss maintains. We new early on that we needed a dark theme since so many service members worked in SCIF's (which often are low light environments). Our primary stakeholder loved the idea of the theme being reminiscent of an old DOS system, and we were able to incorporate bright aurora greens against a dark background.