B2B commerce · 2023 — 2024
Releases took five weeks. I proposed a design system and cut that in half
Solo designer on a fragmented product. Five‑week release cycles, no shared components, Figma files nobody could navigate. I made the case for a design system, and the MVP shipped in a month.
Most of the rebuild work between releases disappeared once there was one source of truth.
Everyone moved onto the system, and nothing was left running on the old files.
Onboarding time reduced. New people started from a documented library. No more reverse-engineering old files.
Why the team needed it
I was the only designer on a product that shipped every five weeks and had no shared components. Nothing about a design system was on anyone's roadmap, so the first job was making the case for one.
- Contribution
- Design system, UX audit, Documentation, Team workflow
- Duration
- MVP in one month
The team complained about six different things. All six came from the same missing layer.
Feature releases averaged five weeks.
No shared components, so every screen got rebuilt from nothing.
Designers and developers had no common language or workflow.
Figma files were fragmented, slow to open, and hard to read.
Onboarding a new person took far too long.
Nobody was sure which designs were final.
To address these, I proposed building a design system to unify elements, streamline collaboration, and speed up development.
With the problems clear, I built a design system that fit how Webshop actually worked, in five steps.
Assessing the current design landscape
I read through the existing designs and Figma files. What came out of it: inconsistencies, redundancies, blocked workflows.
Engaging with stakeholders
Then interviews and surveys with designers and developers, to find out what actually hurt and what they wanted first.
Creating reusable tokens and components
I built the library. UI elements, design tokens for colors, typography and spacing, and components like buttons, badges and grids, all shaped to Webshop's brand and its technical limits.
Designers and developers finally worked from one source of truth. Collaboration got easier and new people ramped up faster.
Building collaboration workflows
Handoff, version control and file management got clearer channels and written documentation. Confusion and errors dropped with them.
Improved file structure
Reorganized Figma files for easier navigation and faster load times by grouping related assets and screens logically.
Files opened faster and the team stopped losing time hunting for the right one.
Full flow audit and coverage
Mapped complete user journeys covering all customer-facing screens to identify and fill gaps like missing states or screens.
The audit caught gaps before they shipped. The product felt more complete, and stakeholders trusted what they were seeing.
Iterating rapidly with feedback
Regular check-ins and demos kept the team in it. That let me bend the system to what they actually needed.
Together these changes made Webshop more consistent, easier to build on, and quicker to ship.
Happy to walk through the parts that did not fit here. Let's get on a call.
