Overview
Designed and scaled a unified design system and core product UI for Empower — a large-scale financial platform providing tools for personal finance, retirement planning, and wealth management for both individual users and enterprise retirement plans.
Context
Empower operated a legacy corporate website and core financial application supported by an outdated UI kit that lacked consistency, scalability, and clear system rules.
Problem
When I joined the team, the product relied on an outdated UI and a fragmented UI kit that did not scale well across teams or platforms. This created friction in the design-to-development workflow, inconsistent user experiences, and slowed feature delivery.
Key issues included
- •Lack of a single, shared design system across products
- •Visual and behavioral inconsistencies between similar components
- •Frequent design drift caused by ad-hoc modifications
- •Friction between design and engineering due to unclear or inconsistent specifications
- •Limited ability to scale UI efficiently as the product evolved
- •These problems impacted development velocity, UI quality, and long-term maintainability.
Solution
Designed and scaled a unified design system for Empower's corporate website and core financial application. Focused on reusable components, consistent UI patterns, and clear data-heavy interfaces to support complex financial workflows across teams and products. The system balanced consistency with flexibility, enabling teams to move faster while maintaining quality and improving user experience through consistent, predictable interactions across all touchpoints.
Approach
I followed a structured, iterative approach aligned with large product teams:
- •Conducted comprehensive UI audit across hundreds of screens and components, identifying inconsistency patterns and documenting pain points from both design and engineering perspectives
- •Interviewed designers and engineers to understand technical constraints, workflow challenges, and adoption barriers
- •Designed scalable design system architecture with reusable components, comprehensive design tokens, and interaction patterns
- •Built interactive Figma prototypes with component variants and states for validation with engineering teams
- •Validated design decisions through internal usability reviews and cross-functional feedback sessions to ensure components met both user needs and technical requirements
- •Established design review process with regular syncs with engineering leads and design system council meetings
- •Created comprehensive documentation, component library, and onboarding materials for design system adoption
- •Iterated through multiple major versions based on team feedback, usage patterns, and evolving product needs
- •Made design decisions collaboratively, balancing consistency, reusability, technical feasibility, and long-term maintainability
Impact
- •Reduced design-to-development handoff time from weeks to days through standardized components and clear specifications
- •Accelerated feature shipping across multiple product teams by enabling faster component reuse and reducing design-engineering friction
- •Significantly reduced recurring UI inconsistency issues through standardized components and design tokens
- •Improved user experience through consistent, predictable interactions and reduced cognitive load across all Empower products
- •Enabled designers to focus on product strategy by reducing time spent on repetitive component design through reusable library
- •Improved design-engineering alignment and reduced rework through clearer specifications and collaborative review process
- •Established design governance process adopted by designers across multiple product areas, ensuring long-term system quality
Reflection
"This project reinforced my experience designing at a system level — balancing product requirements, engineering constraints, and long-term scalability while maintaining a high standard of visual and interaction quality across a complex financial platform. Leading the design system initiative required not just design skills, but strategic thinking, cross-functional influence, and the ability to drive adoption across multiple teams. Through direction-setting, establishing governance processes, and enabling team adoption, I influenced how design and engineering collaborated and how products were built at scale. The measurable impact on development velocity and design quality validated the strategic importance of investing in foundational design infrastructure. This experience taught me that great design systems are not just collections of components, but strategic enablers that unlock team productivity and product quality at scale. Key learnings included the importance of governance from day one, the need to balance consistency with flexibility, and how to build systems that evolve with product needs."
