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Design system for Valencia: shaping civic digital experiences
The journey begins: a vision for civic digital unity in 2025, the Ayuntamiento de Valencia seeks to modernize its digital presence, and a new design system emerges as the key to this transformation. This initiative aims to create a cohesive framework to power all civic services—citizen services, urban planning tools, and administrative portals—ensuring a consistent and accessible experience for all residents.
The challenge: Redefining identity and accessibility the task was to craft a design system that reflects valencia’s new identity while serving a diverse population—residents, tourists, and officials. This required researching design systems, understanding components technically, establishing foundations, validating the identity with the client, and building a more accessible information architecture to meet the needs of all users.
Exploring the landscape
Researching the leaders of design systems our journey started with a thorough investigation of design systems. We explored pioneers like gov.uk’s design system, material design by google, and european civic platforms to understand their approaches to accessibility, scalability, and user experience. this research informed a foundation tailored to valencia’s civic needs.
Decoding the technical blueprint
Unraveling the components under the hood with research as our guide, we delved into the technical aspects of design components. we analyzed buttons, forms, navigation menus, and data visualizations, ensuring they aligned with civic applications. Collaborating with developers, we assessed behavior, responsiveness, and integration to create a technically sound framework.
Laying the foundations
Building the cornerstone of valencia’s design with components understood, we laid the foundations of the design system. This included defining a color palette inspired by valencia’s heritage (oranges, and neutrals), selecting accessible typography, and designing reusable ui elements. these foundations ensure consistency and compliance with accessibility standards like WCAG.
Validating the identity and crafting accessible architecture
Shaping a user-friendly civic structure next, we collaborated with the ayuntamiento de valencia to validate the new identity, ensuring it reflected the city’s cultural values and modern vision. we then redesigned the information architecture, focusing on accessibility. This structure, refined with client feedback and user needs, offers an intuitive and inclusive navigation for all residents.
Delivering the unified solution
Bringing the design system to valencia’s services with foundations and architecture in place, we delivered the final design system, applying it to screens for citizen portals, urban planning tools, and admin interfaces. This unified approach ensures all civic applications share a consistent, efficient, and accessible experience.
