Design Systems

Building easily adopted systems for both designers and developers

The success of a Design System is defined by its adoption among both designers and their development counterparts. Over the past 15 years, I have led multiple Design System initiatives that significantly improved cross-functional efficiency, accelerated product delivery, and achieved high adoption rates across global design and engineering teams.

Twilio Paste Design System

Rebuilding and Refocusing

When I assumed leadership of the Paste Design System team, both the team and the system had been heavily affected by Twilio’s layoffs in January 2024. A group that had once been more than 20 strong was reduced to just four members. Twilio needed steady leadership to ensure the longevity of the Paste Design System while realigning its efforts with the company’s evolving priorities.

Results:

Successfully secured reinvestment in the Paste Design System Team
Grew size of team by 100% in 2024, creating a globally distributed team with centers of excellence in the Americas and India
Aligned the Design System roadmap supporting company growth strategy priorities
Developed and released the AI UI toolkit, enabling the industries first AI enabled features (e.g. Messaging Insights, Conversational AI, etc.)

Liberty Mutual & Safeco Design Systems

Focusing on Cohesion and Adoption

Leveraging my successes and failures in past Design Systems, I shepherded a multi-disciplinary team through the development of a cohesive multi-brand design system. This system was successfully adopted due to the strategy of supporting multiple modern tech stacks (e.g. React, Angular, etc.) and focusing on processes for easy adoption by developers.

Results:

Fourth major update of the design system with zero regressions
100% adoption amongst my Designers and our Development counterparts
100% of components meet accessibility standards
Multiple case studies quantifying development hours saved through adoption

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Updating the Brand

Deep Partnership with Brand

In order to create cohesive digital experiences for Safeco customers, I partnered with Marketing in the development of a new Safeco Brand Guideline. The focus was on: updating the Safeco brand, aligning with Liberty Mutual's brand palette, ensuring scalability, and ensuring that all standards supported Digital Experiences and Accessibility requirements.

Results

Refreshed Brand Guidelines in less than 3 months

100% adoption of Brand Guidelines in Design System within 4 weeks

100% adoption of Brand Guidelines within Squad roadmaps within 3 months