Maturing and Governing a Design System

Brand: National Healthcare Brand

Role: Head of Platform Design & Design System

Challenge

Over time our design system was becoming more of a suggestion than a standard, with development and product teams increasingly creating their own custom components and variations to meet immediate project needs. What started as well-intentioned problem-solving had spiraled into a fragmented ecosystem where nearly every team was building their own "unique" solutions, effectively dismantling any semblance of design consistency. Our once-centralized design system had devolved into a patchwork of divergent interfaces, each with slightly different interactions, and patterns that created a jarring and unpredictable user experience. These well-intentioned but uncoordinated efforts weren't just aesthetically problematic—they created real friction for our users, who had to relearn interaction patterns across different parts of our product constantly. The compounding effect was clear: we were trading short-term convenience for long-term user trust and product coherence.

Discovery 

We knew our design system needed a health check, so we set out to really understand what was working and what wasn't. Our first step was to send out surveys to our designers and developers, asking them to be honest about their experiences with our current system. Those initial responses gave us a good overview, but we wanted to dig deeper, so we conducted one-on-one interviews with designers, developers and product managers to hear their stories, challenges, and ideas firsthand. Each conversation peeled back another layer, revealing unique insights about how people were actually using—and sometimes struggling with—our design system. In addition we also conductive extensive competitive analysis and audits to understand how we compared against some of the best design systems in the industry. What emerged was a clear picture of where we were falling short and, more importantly, where we had opportunities to make meaningful improvements. This wasn't just about collecting data; it was about understanding the real human experience behind our design system and charting a path forward that would genuinely support our team.

What We Learned 

 Through our discovery process, we learned several critical insights about our design system's challenges:

• Documentation was nearly non-existent, creating a knowledge vacuum where teams were left to interpret and implement components based on individual understanding, leading to widespread inconsistency and confusion.
• Our intake and enhancement processes were fundamentally broken, with no clear, centralized mechanism for teams to propose, track, and prioritize design system improvements across multiple communication channels like team chats, meetings, office hours, and GitHub intake forms.
• Collaborative synergy was absent, with teams operating in isolation and no structured approach to cross-functional communication and alignment, which critically undermined our ability to maintain a cohesive and evolving design system.
• Our design system releases lacked clear communication, leaving product and experience teams uninformed about critical updates. The absence of a structured communication protocol meant teams were frequently blindsided by changes, unable to understand or anticipate their potential impact. This lack of transparency created unnecessary friction, forcing teams into reactive adaptation instead of proactive planning.

Strategic Roadmap

I worked with my team to create a strategic roadmap for the design system by first aligning with our organization’s OKRs to ensure our efforts supported broader business goals. We identified key themes and pain points, then grouped them into larger initiatives that addressed scalability, consistency, and efficiency. To ensure seamless execution, we mapped these initiatives to our organization’s product management framework, making it easier for cross-functional teams to integrate and adopt. Prioritization was based on impact, feasibility, and dependencies, ensuring that our roadmap balanced quick wins with long-term investments. We also established clear ownership, milestones, and success metrics to track progress and measure value. This approach resulted in a cohesive, strategically aligned design system roadmap that drove adoption, improved efficiency, and supported product innovation.

Guidance and Documentation

We developed a self-service onboarding experience for our design system that made it easier for new team members to get up to speed quickly. By mapping out the specific needs of designers and developers, we created resources that helped them understand and use the system more independently. Instead of relying on lengthy manual training sessions, we built an intuitive toolkit that guided people through the key components and best practices. This approach meant our design system team spent far less time on individual onboarding and support. We also launched a comprehensive documentation and guidelines site that served as a single source of truth, reducing ambiguity and providing clear, accessible references for designers and developers across the organization. Our goal was simple: make it as easy as possible for people to understand and use our design system. The result was a more efficient and user-friendly way of bringing new team members into our design workflow.

Process Improvement: Path to Seamless Execution

Our design system process improvement strategy focused on several key areas of transformation:

• We established a clear governance model with defined roles, responsibilities, and decision-making protocols to create accountability and streamline our design system evolution.

• We implemented a robust intake and prioritization framework that standardized how teams could propose, evaluate, and integrate design system enhancements, ensuring transparent and collaborative decision-making.

• Regular cross-functional sync-ups, collaborative design jams and design system office hours became our new norm, creating dedicated spaces for communication, knowledge sharing, and collaborative problem-solving.

• Testing and validation processes were integrated to ensure component consistency, performance, and adherence to design system standards, minimizing manual review and potential human error.

• We implemented a comprehensive communication strategy that included regular newsletters, version release notes, impact assessments, and cross-functional sync-ups, we transformed our design system communication from an afterthought to a proactive, transparent process that empowered teams with timely and actionable information.

Northstar Vision 

As a UX leader, I gained organizational alignment by creating future concepts that demonstrated the potential impact of investing in maturing our design system. Through prototypes, storytelling, and user journey visualizations, I helped stakeholders see how an improved experience could drive efficiency and business growth. These tangible concepts made it easier to align teams, increase buy-in, and show the value of investing in a reusable and consistant design system. This alignment led to increased adoption of our system, as teams could clearly see how it addressed their needs and improved user satisfaction. Ultimately, the success of these concepts helped us secure additional funding to further develop and scale the system.

Outcome

By establishing clear governance, improving communication, and creating comprehensive documentation and resources, we reduced design and development friction, accelerated product development cycles, and created a more cohesive user experience. 

Reduced the number of support tickets by 60%.
Reduced average time to resolve a request/ticket by 40%
Reduced delivery time of enhancements request by 50%