A redesign of Workday's developer forum - aligned to the Canvas Design System and carefully adapted within Discourse.
Workday's developer forum runs on Discourse - a platform with strict structural limits. The brief: align it with Canvas, Workday's design system, in time for Devcon. Look and feel like Workday, without leaving the platform.
The first task was strategy. An audit of what could change inside Discourse, what couldn't, and where a small set of CSS changes could carry the most weight.
The audit identified the smallest set of styles, templates, and components that could be changed once, then carried throughout the forum through CSS alone. No backend changes. No platform fork. Every decision had to deploy as a stylesheet.
A clearer typographic hierarchy made categories easier to scan. Navigation surfaced information faster. Discourse components moved closer to Canvas, without breaking from the platform beneath them.
Existing Discourse components and styles and Workday equivalents identified for implementation
The redesign brought Workday's visual language - colour, type, and structural rhythm - into Discourse without overriding the platform. The forum gained warmth, shape, and a clearer editorial voice - turning a standard developer space into something more considered.
Bespoke illustrations and icons carried that language through the experience, from the home page to smaller navigational and content moments. Restrained, but distinctive - a signal that the forum had been designed, not simply configured.
Forum landing page · Before / After
A set of layout templates and styles gave the development team a way to publish new sections and updates without design support. The Canvas system's logic and proportions are built in - consistency remains even as content changes.
The result is a forum that holds its visual integrity past launch, past the designer leaving the room.
A series of illustrations and icons were created in Workday's visual language and threaded through the forum. They add presence and warmth while supporting orientation across the experience.
"Live for Devcon, under a month from start to finish. Designed, not configured."
Project note
The forum went live for Devcon on schedule, with a design that felt recognisably Workday. After handover, the development team could continue publishing and maintaining templates without design support.