Design System • Shipped 2025
Building a design system from 0 to 50+ components
- Timeframe
- 4 months
- Role
- UX/UI Designer
- Team
- UX/UI Designer2 Software Engineers
- Skills
- Design System, Prototyping
Building the building blocks of an early-stage startup
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Colours and typography.
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Reusable components.Life before the design system: accessibility issues, inconsistent UI, and unclear system feedback
How might we create a scalable design system that unifies the product experience, streamlines design–developer handoff, and improves accessibility?
Auditing the application revealed usability gaps
Lack of colour contrast with the text.
Inconsistent patterns with spacing and styling.
Lack of feedback states
Inconsistent spacing and unnecessary emojis reduced professionalism.
The developers didn't see the value of a design system...they were focused on building
THINKING LONG-TERM
Even though it meant taking time to build the design system, the long-term benefits were evident:
Save time on tedious development + cleaner code
Build reusable components to standardize and reduce developement time.
Improved usability
Consistent, accessible design to improve the user experience.
Long term scalability
Less time spent on design and development in the long run.
Professionalism + visual appeal
UI that makes the company look professional and legit.
I prioritized three main things when building out the design system ...
Accessibility
Ensuring accessibility is built into the components
Consistency
Creating a consistent system with colour, typography and style
Reusability
Build reusable components that can be used across multiple interfaces
Revisiting the same components over and over again
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Different versions of the table row.Leveraging a 50+ component design system in a fast moving environment
Learning from existing systems and building a maintainable design system
Design is never linear
With hiccups along the way and many back-and-forths with developers and users, I learned to see design as a dynamic process where you must always question design choices, iterate, and focus on progress over perfection.
Embracing ambiguity
There was a lot of ambiguity around what the product should be, especially in the beginning. I learned to become more comfortable with the unknown and see it as an opportunity to explore and ask deeper questions.
Product Design • Shipped 2025