Planning a scalable design system

As the company expanded its digital presence, a significant challenge emerged: our designs were falling out of sync with the brand’s guidelines. Without a single source of truth, inconsistencies appeared everywhere from buttons and form inputs to larger components. Designers and developers spent unnecessary time recreating or reconciling elements, leading to inefficiencies and frustration.

We set out to address this by building a unified design system - a foundation to improve collaboration, streamline workflows, and future-proof our design efforts.

“A design system isn’t just about consistency - it’s about creating a shared language for teams to build better, faster, and together.”

The Push for a Unified Design System

The fragmented design ecosystem created challenges that impacted teams daily. Designers and developers relied on ad hoc solutions, resulting in misaligned user experiences and duplicated effort. The lack of reusable components made scaling the design process difficult.

Our mission was to create a unified system that brought clarity, consistency, and adaptability to teams across all platforms. We aimed to eliminate inefficiencies while empowering teams with tools that could grow alongside the organisation.

Laying the Groundwork with Research and Iteration

Building a design system required a phased approach to ensure alignment and scalability. We started identifying key priorities like reusable components, cross-platform consistency, and team alignment. This benchmarking guided how we would tackle our unique challenges.

The next step was a comprehensive audit of our existing UI components. Cataloging inconsistencies revealed gaps and redundancies that had emerged over time. We worked component by component to establish designs that spanned web, mobile, and native applications, creating core standards for global styles and guidelines.

While the initial designs didn’t solve every edge case, they served as a strong starting point for standardising elements across the company.

Introducing Atomic Design for Scalable Solutions

With the audit complete, I focused on creating a scalable MVP. At its heart was an internal site structured to serve two primary user groups:

• Designers - who needed branding rules, typography standards, and design principles.
• Developers - who relied on reusable code, real-world markup, and CSS architecture.

To support developers, I built a lightweight CSS architecture similar to a Bootstrap framework. This allowed teams to adopt the system incrementally without requiring a full overhaul. The architecture included reusable components and an asset library for instant access to logos, fonts, and icons.

“By designing/developing for incremental adoption, we empowered teams to align at their own pace while still making measurable progress.”

Rolling Out the MVP

We began with a controlled rollout to a smaller group of teams, gathering feedback to refine the system before scaling further. This allowed us to prioritise immediate needs based on real-world usage while avoiding overwhelming teams with too many changes at once.

As adoption increased, we continued collecting feedback, addressing gaps, and iterating on the system. This ensured it evolved in response to real-world challenges, maintaining relevance and usability.

Driving Efficiency Through Consistency and Modularity

The impact of the design system was immediately clear. Designers and developers could now rely on reusable components, significantly reducing time spent on projects. Consistency across platforms ensured a cohesive experience for users, while the modular CSS architecture made onboarding new teams and scaling the system seamless.

“The unified design system didn’t just improve workflows - it became a foundation for collaboration, scalability, and creativity.”

Future Scaling

The MVP was only the beginning. With the groundwork in place, the design system is poised for future growth. Plans include expanding the component library to include more complex designs, integrating design tokens to enable faster global updates, and automating testing to ensure components function consistently across all platforms.

By building incrementally and focusing on real-world use cases, the design system will continue to evolve alongside the company’s needs.

A Shared Language for Teams

This project reinforced the importance of starting small, listening to user feedback, and iterating on real-world needs. What began as a way to address inefficiencies became a shared language that brought designers, developers, and marketers together.

The result? A scalable, user-centered design system that empowers teams, streamlines workflows, and delivers a seamless experience for users.