Zonar Systems // Design System

Saving time and money while improving customer service and satisfaction

The problem

Being a 20 year old company, Zonar Systems had understandably amassed a significant amount of technical debt and UI inconsistencies across its various platforms and products. Furthermore, product teams were working in silos and building similar features in different ways, wasting cycles and compounding UI inconsistencies.

My solution

This was a complicated, multi-faceted initiative that touched every aspect of Zonar’s product delivery organization. Over the course of multiple years, I led the effort to develop a design system and pattern library (called DSPLY for “Design System, Pattern Library, and YOU”) to be used across all product teams at Zonar Systems. The need for Design Systems goes hand in hand with the need for scale, efficiency, and consistency in Design.

When designs are consistent, it is much easier for users to learn how a UI works, and builds trust between the user and a product.

My team’s goal was to deliver a set of design principles, a library of UI components in Figma for use by the Design Team, a pattern library of web components for use by the various product engineering teams. But before any of this could happen, we had to get executive sponsorship onboard with our plan.

My Contribution

Design system strategy & governance
Organizational leadership
Process development
Accessibility & internationalization
Story mapping
User story writing
Cross-functional collaboration
Responsive & adaptive design
Design documentation

The Proposal

Before anything can change, the work needed to be approved and prioritized by Executive Leadership. That meant clearly defining the problem, concisely explaining how a Design System would solve it, and building a case for why this work should be prioritized.

A slide from my pitch deck to Senior Leadership to help them understand why a Design System should be prioritized.

It is always better to not just *tell*, but also *show* the evidence of design inconsistencies.

Because a design system is an investment, I need to show leadership exactly how much money a library of reusable components could save the company, to make certain it would be an investment worth making. As it happens, a design system and pattern library could save Zonar more than $9 million over five years.