Nexus: Unifying the Enterprise Experience

The Problem: Design Debt

Our product suite had grown organically over 5 years, resulting in a fragmented user experience. We had 14 different shades of blue, 6 different date pickers, and inconsistent button behaviors. Developers were spending 40% of their time reinventing UI components.

My Role: Lead Systems Designer

Thinking in Tokens

I didn't just want to build a sticker sheet; I wanted to build a language. I started by defining the Design Tokens (the sub-atomic particles of the system).

• Primitive Tokens: `blue-500`, `gray-100` (The raw values).
• Semantic Tokens: `color-action-primary`, `bg-surface-subtle` (The intent).

This semantic layer was crucial. It allowed us to implement Dark Mode across 5 products in just two weeks by simply swapping the token mapping, rather than rewriting CSS.

Component Architecture & Accessibility

I built a library of 40+ components in Figma using Auto-Layout and Variants. But the real value was in the code.

Baked-in Accessibility

I worked closely with engineering to ensure every component was accessible by default. For example, our `Input` component automatically associates the label with the input field using `for` and `id`, and handles error states with `aria-invalid` and `aria-describedby`.

Governance: The Human Side

A design system fails if no one uses it. I established a Federated Contribution Model:

• Office Hours: Weekly sessions where designers could propose new patterns.
• Decision Logs: Documenting why we chose a specific interaction pattern to prevent circular debates.

Results

• Velocity: Frontend development time reduced by 35%.
• Adoption: 100% adoption across all new feature work within 6 months.
• Quality: Accessibility defects dropped by 80% in QA testing.