One Language
for Three Products.
SUS score: 50. Target: above industry average. Outcome: 74.
The problem
When you have three product lines, multiple designers, and an engineering org that’s tripled in size, the cracks show everywhere. Inconsistencies compound. Every new hire has to reverse-engineer what “right” looks like. Decisions that should take minutes take days.
The design system started as a technical initiative and became something much larger: the connective tissue between design, engineering, and product. At peak, it was directly shaping the work of 60% of the product and development org across 9 cross-functional teams.
The hard part was never the components. It was governance. Who decides when something changes? How do you handle one-offs? How do you get engineers to actually use it? Organizational problems dressed up as design problems. Solving them required as much facilitation as craft.
What we were solving for
- One shared foundation across three product lines, so nine teams could stop rebuilding the same components
- Cut design and development planning complexity in half through consistent patterns and shared language
- Measurably improve usability: SUS above enterprise SaaS industry average (68)
- Faster onboarding for new hires, who no longer had to reverse-engineer what “right” looks like
Collaboration model
Research, benchmarking, identifying opportunity
Ideation, prototyping, alignment with stakeholders
Validation with users, iteration, rollout
If I could go back
- ◌Focus on mobile and native experiences from day one
- ◌Prioritize accessibility standards throughout, not as a retrofit
- ◌Integrate Labs research data with sales and marketing earlier
- ◌Improve time-to-market for design system updates
Details
Role
Director of Product Design
Company
Copperleaf Technologies
Period
2018–2023
Focus areas