Category
Design Systems · UI
Year
2023
Role
Design Systems Lead
Duration
6 months
Team
2 designers, 4 engineers
Tools
Figma, Storybook, Zeroheight, Tokens Studio
One source of truth for three product teams
Three product teams. Three separate component libraries. Seventeen different button styles. Nucleus was born out of a shared frustration: designers and engineers were rebuilding the same components over and over, with subtle inconsistencies that eroded brand trust and slowed every sprint.
I led the design side of Nucleus — a token-based design system that became the single source of truth for all three teams within six months of launch.
The Challenge
The hardest part wasn't building the components — it was getting three teams with different codebases, different design tools, and different release cadences to adopt a shared system without feeling like they were losing autonomy.
We had to design for contribution as much as consumption: the system needed to be easy to use and easy to extend, with clear governance so it didn't fragment again.
Scale & Impact
3
Product teams adopted
120+
Components documented
60%
Reduction in design-to-dev handoff time
17→1
Button variants consolidated
We ran a component audit across all three products, cataloguing 340 unique UI elements. After deduplication and rationalisation, we shipped 120 documented components covering 94% of all UI patterns in production.
Design Process
Audit
Full UI inventory across three products. Identified duplication, inconsistency, and gaps. Prioritised by usage frequency.
Token Architecture
Built a three-tier token system: global → semantic → component. Enabled theming without component changes.
Build & Document
Figma component library with auto-layout, variants, and interactive states. Storybook for engineering. Zeroheight for documentation.
Govern
Contribution guidelines, a weekly office hours session, and a Slack channel for system questions. Adoption grew organically.
Outcome
Nucleus reduced design-to-dev handoff time by 60% and eliminated the most common source of design inconsistency across all three products. Six months after launch, all new features were being built exclusively with Nucleus components — no exceptions.