đ Business Impact
⢠Delivered a fully functional, widely adopted design system in just 3 months
⢠Enabled engineering to ship designs the next day using standardized components
⢠Improved design consistency, team velocity, and collaboration across 9+ designers and multiple product teams
đŻ Project Role
Led the vision, coordination, and execution of a new design system from scratch. Aligned stakeholders, facilitated working sessions, structured priorities, and delivered a scalable system to accelerate product development.
đ Skills Used
⢠Design Systems
⢠Product Design
⢠Visual Design
⢠Interaction Design
⢠Design Leadership
⢠Facilitation
⢠Information Architecture
⢠Prototyping
⢠Naming Conventions
⢠Cross-functional Communication
The Problem
Go from zero to design systemâin 3 months.
When I joined the Disney Studios team, their existing design system was outdated and largely ignored by engineering. With a team of 9 designers and one frontend engineer, we needed a system that workedâand fast.
Given my previous success creating a design system at Ticketmaster, I was asked to lead the effort.
The Solution
Step 1: Structure the Collaboration
A design system only succeeds if it gets attention. I kicked off the process by establishing a recurring meeting cadence with the design team and key engineering stakeholders. These werenât open-ended meetingsâthey were outcome-driven, time-boxed, and framed around shared ownership.
I used Monday.com to visualize progress and responsibilities. Trello, Notion, or Airtable wouldâve worked tooâbut the key was visibility and momentum.
Step 2: Define the Foundation
We began with the foundational elements:
⢠Typography
⢠Color
⢠Grid
⢠Spacing
⢠Motion
⢠Elevation
⢠Icons
I guided the team through tradeoffsâchoosing system-friendly icon sets, limiting typography to under 10 variants, and ensuring all elements supported both light and dark themes from the start. We also established:
⢠Scalable naming conventions (e.g., âWhite - High Emphasisâ vs. "white-100")
⢠Theme compatibility for multi-brand adaptability
⢠Clear guidelines for asset versioning and distribution in Figma
This foundational phase took roughly 5 weeks, meeting twice a week.
Other Important Considerations
Here are other parts of the puzzle to settle on early in the process.
- Dark / Light Theme
- Naming Conventions
- Design Asset DistributionÂ
- Theme Compatibility
All of these topics are already covered in much more detail on Medium and other places that I won't get into too much detail here. For me, even if it doesn't seem obvious when you start, make your design system able to seamlessly handle light and dark themes. You will thank me later. Name your elements in the most abstract, yet most understandable way possible. For example, colors should be named based based on function (e.g. White - High Emphais, White - Medium Emphasis, etc.) rather than hex code or fanciful names. Decide on how you want to distribute design system assets including version control, updates and user management. Right now, tools like Sketch Library, Framer X and Figma all offer interesting options for design system asset management. Lastly, it is imperative that everyone on the team buys into the concept that you are really creating one specific theme for your company and your design system should be easy to convert to another company's theme.
Step 3: Build Base Components
With our foundations in place, we turned our attention to core components:
⢠Buttons
⢠Text Inputs
⢠Dropdowns
⢠Switches / Radios / Checkboxes
⢠Search Fields
I reduced meeting frequency to once a week to allow time for production work. We focused on function, accessibility, and design-system complianceâensuring everything was cleanly documented and reusable.
Step 4: Add Complex Components
Once we had a toolkit that handled ~80% of UI needs, we expanded to cover more complex use cases:
⢠Menus
⢠Dialogs
⢠Data Tables
⢠Tags, Badges, Filters
⢠Cards, Drawers, App Bars
⢠Progress Indicators
These âorganismsâ leveraged existing components and patterns, reinforcing system scalability.
Step 5: Socialize and Sell
A design system is only valuable if itâs used. I actively partnered with product and engineering to evangelize the systemâshowing them exactly where it saved time.
I framed the pitch not around design consistency, but around speed and efficiency:
⢠Faster prototyping
⢠Easier handoff
⢠Shorter development cycles
This shifted perception from ânice to haveâ to âessential.â The system quickly gained traction.
The Results
⢠Delivered a robust, flexible design system in just 3 months
⢠Used immediately in one of my product projectsâengineering implemented a design the day after I delivered it
⢠Enabled designers and engineers to collaborate faster and with greater confidence
⢠Set the stage for future scalability, including theme adaptability and shared asset management
