Live election coverage is a huge opportunity for NBC News and MSNBC to deliver fast, accurate results across television graphics, interactive boards, websites, mobile apps and social media. In previous election cycles, design collaboration has been limited as teams operated separately with unique design systems and tools. As audiences have shifted to watching the election unfold not just on-air but across a variety of platforms, we saw an opportunity to unite and make sure we delivered what our audience needed, where they needed it, all using a common language.

Even beyond bringing design languages across NBC News together, election coverage involves coordination between dozens of areas of the organization. Are the interactions at the Big Board meeting the needs of Steve Kornacki and Chuck Todd as well as the hosts on Telemundo? Do we have a system in place to quickly generate winner cards based on our Figma templates for social media? Are developers able to translate our annotated designs into Storybook components? Could we harness the latest iOS features like home screen widgets? Are internal stakeholders understanding our plans with our Figma presentations? And, most importantly, are we able to validate from our prototypes and user-testing that our audience is getting what they need from our designs?

Over this last year, we were able to bring disparate teams together resulting in a clear, consistent picture of the election across platforms like never before.