Halliburton Consistency Matters
SPERRY DRILLING
UI STYLE GUIDE
A sole-lead initiative to audit 4 enterprise drilling applications, unify a fractured visual system, and deliver a cross-app design standard adopted by engineering and approved by leadership.
Four apps. Zero shared standards.
One system to fix it all.
Sole UX Lead.
This was entirely self-initiated. I identified the inconsistency problem, designed the audit methodology, conducted the full cross-app review, and produced the complete style guide from scratch — without a team beneath me.
The guide went from zero to leadership approval and engineering adoption as a single-designer effort, covering color, typography, design elements, breakpoints, and best practices.
Why This Mattered
- Sperry’s 4 applications were built by separate teams over years — with no shared visual standard
- 12 variations of red were in active use across the suite — none matching Halliburton’s official brand red (#CC0000)
- 20+ variations of grey created visual noise and hierarchy breakdown across all four products
- Over a dozen undefined secondary and tertiary colors were applied with no rules, guidelines, or naming system
- Inconsistency at this scale directly impacts user productivity in high-stakes operational environments
Inconsistency at scale erodes trust — and productivity.
The Sperry Drilling software suite serves field engineers and operations teams in some of the world’s most demanding drilling environments. These users move between applications constantly — and every visual inconsistency creates cognitive overhead at exactly the wrong moment.
Audit. Synthesize.
Systematize. Ship.
Cross-App Color Audit
Systematically extracted every color in active use across AutoGS, iTom, LOGIX, and RoxC Blast. Rather than spot-checking, I pulled colors from every state, component, and data visualization layer — mapping them against the Halliburton parent brand. The findings were stark: the suite had fractured into visual islands, each with its own unofficial palette.
Unified Color System Design
Built a structured palette anchored to Halliburton brand red (#CC0000) as the primary, complemented by a curated set of secondary colors serving as data visualization and status indicators. Applied the 60/30/10 rule to establish clear usage hierarchy, and defined deep, base, and tint variants for every primary color to support layered UI states.
Typography System
Selected Roboto as the suite-wide typeface — chosen for its clean rendering at small sizes on industrial monitors in the field. Defined a full typographic hierarchy from H1 (36px Light) through button labels (10px Regular) in both light and dark contexts. Documented WCAG and ADA compliance requirements. The scale was designed to function as a shared token system any developer could reference directly.
Design Elements & Breakpoint Standards
Documented static UI elements, actionable elements, and feature elements — defining consistent behavior, spacing, and states for each. Established desktop and mobile breakpoints so the suite could scale appropriately as field-facing mobile applications were added.
Leadership Presentation & Engineering Handoff
Packaged the complete style guide into a decision-ready format for stakeholder review — framing the audit findings as a business case for consistency. After leadership approval, the guide was distributed as a living engineering reference, embedded directly into the product backlog workflow across all four product teams.
From fragmentation to a unified system.
The Sperry Drilling UI Style Guide V3 became the visual foundation for all active Sperry software products. Engineering teams used it as a build-time reference, reducing design ambiguity and developer questions during implementation cycles.
By solving the color and type inconsistency problem at the system level — rather than app by app — the guide created durable, scalable consistency that holds as the suite continues to grow.
What Changed
- Style guide adopted as the official UI standard across all 4 Sperry Drilling applications
- Engineering teams used the guide as a build reference, reducing design ambiguity in development sprints
- Reduced design rework cycles — teams had a single source of truth to resolve visual conflicts
- Presented to and approved by Halliburton / Sperry Drilling leadership
- Established the foundation for consistent component libraries and future design system expansion
- Positioned UX as a strategic, org-wide function within the Sperry software organization
