Hey, Chris-
Thanks for reaching out, and I think I understand the question you're really asking. It sounds like you have a really big, systemic problem to tackle and a number of people to communicate to. Interoperability and consistency of workflows will be key, and you'll probably need to convince a number of people to change the design of each of the point products to align to a consistent, workable model that is intuitive for your users to use.
I think Adobe XD is an excellent product for you to use, and here are some of the reasons why:
- XD is built to communicate visual workflows. With design, prototyping, and sharing all packed into one product, you'll be able to really easily help your other teams (and executives) understand the basic pain points you're trying to solve as people use each product (and use them all together).
- XD has tools to encourage design consistency. From colors and character styles that are global to an XD design document to the new ability for symbols to stay linked across documents, XD makes it easy for other designers to stay consistent with each other. You could create a visual design language and describe common patterns of workflow behavior to help other designers across your company adopt not just consistent look and feel, but to learn more about what common patterns you'll want to use and reuse.
As a side note, we're implementing these types of programs within Adobe, and you might want to read more about it here: Introducing Spectrum: How Adobe Is Building a Design System at Scale | Adobe Blog
- XD can import most existing design files to help you get started. You can open Sketch, Photoshop, and Illustrator files of your team's existing designs with all of the vectors and layers intact. This means you won't need to do hundreds of hours of work just to switch over into XD to use its prototyping capabilities.
There's a lot more in here to unpack, but I encourage you to watch the brand new video we have on https://xd.adobe.com that talks about how certain large companies are using XD within their walls to solve exactly the problem you're responsible for.
Good luck, and feel free to reach out (Twitter: @elainecchao) if you want to continue the conversation. I'm more than happy to connect you with someone in your region if you want to ask more questions about whether or not XD is the right tool to use.
Hope that helps!
Elaine Chao
Product Manager, Adobe XD