Design System Lead
Improving consistency, accessibility, and adoption across a complex multi-product ecosystem, enabling teams to ship faster and create a more unified user experience.
RoleDesign System Lead
companyCloudBees
focusDesign Systems, Accessibility, Governance
outcomeUnified platform experience across multiple products
PartnersProduct, Engineering, Front-end
Architecting and Documenting Tokens & Architecture
The design system brought together tokens, components, and shared patterns into a single foundation for product development. By establishing a common language across design and engineering, teams were able to deliver more consistent experiences, accelerate delivery, and scale the platform with greater confidence.
Spacing & Modular Typography
As products evolve, typography must scale without disrupting hierarchy, readability, or layout integrity. We developed a modular type system that provides a flexible, predictable foundation for interface design, enabling teams to create consistent experiences across products and platforms.
Dynamic Color Architecture & Theming
We developed a token-driven colour architecture that supports accessible theming and data visualisation at scale. The system enables the generation of cohesive, WCAG-compliant colour palettes that balance brand expression, usability, and accessibility across products.
Documentation & UI Kits
A design system is only as effective as its documentation. Beyond components and tokens, teams need clear guidance on when, why, and how patterns should be used. Building this shared understanding required close collaboration across design, engineering, and product teams to establish principles, document best practices, and create a scalable foundation for decision-making.
Components
Comprehensive component documentation that establishes a shared understanding across design and engineering teams, accelerating adoption and ensuring consistent implementation.
Patterns
Documented UX patterns, principles, and best practices that created a shared foundation across teams, enabling more consistent and scalable product experiences.
Application
Applied Material Design, responsive patterns, and microinteractions to improve usability and consistency.
Socialising Adoption
Designing the System Was the Easy Part. Driving Adoption Was the Real Challenge.
Designers
Design teams are often strong advocates for design systems because they directly benefit from the consistency, efficiency, and collaboration they enable. Having access to a shared library of components, patterns, and design principles allows teams to move faster while maintaining a cohesive user experience across products.
Developers & Product
Product and engineering teams often face competing priorities, making design system adoption a secondary concern. As new requirements emerge, teams may create bespoke solutions to meet immediate needs. A successful design system embraces this reality by providing clear contribution pathways that allow proven patterns to be incorporated back into the system and shared across the organisation.
Product Ownership
Without a dedicated Product Owner, the design system team needed a clear framework for planning and prioritisation. I stepped into this space by introducing roadmaps, documentation, and lightweight product management practices, creating greater visibility, alignment, and focus across the team.
Jira Board
To improve visibility and alignment, I introduced roadmap planning, backlog organisation, and lightweight governance practices. These provided teams with a clearer understanding of priorities, dependencies, and long-term objectives, helping transform reactive work into a more strategic and predictable process.
Documentation & Goal Setting.
Linking roadmap initiatives to company objectives created a clearer framework for prioritisation, helping teams align their efforts around shared goals and measurable outcomes.
Design Ops
Design systems can extend beyond components and tokens. To support the wider design process, I developed a collection of wireframing, annotation, and workflow tools that helped teams collaborate more efficiently and move from concept to delivery with greater consistency.
Resource kits for designers
Wireframe Kit v1.0
Usage statistics