Lead UX Designer
Building a component-led design system for Engage
The challenge
Engage's Figma files had no shared structure. Layouts, components, icons and variables were duplicated across files instead of pulled from one source. That made it hard for anyone outside the core team to design consistently, or trust that the library matched what had shipped. The email templates and Word reports Engage generates through GemBox sat outside this system entirely — styled ad hoc, with no component standards of their own.
I needed to rebuild the design system around a single source of truth, and bring that same discipline to the GemBox-generated outputs.
Process
Working with the UX designer I managed, I rebuilt the Engage design system around best practice. I built page templates for every page type, a structured file layout, and a full set of variables, icons and components. I published everything to the team library, ready to import into new designs instead of being recreated each time. I used branching to review changes safely before merging them in, and checked usage analytics regularly to catch parts of the system falling out of date. I also built visual documentation for each component, backed by supporting docs in Confluence. Then I went beyond the original brief: I brought the same component discipline to the email templates and Word reports Engage generates through GemBox, so those outputs stayed consistent with the rest of the system.
Gallery
Results
The result was a design system the wider team could actually build from. New designs pulled directly from an up-to-date, versioned library, instead of copying old files, and the Figma and Confluence documentation meant anyone joining the work could get oriented quickly. Extending the same standards to GemBox-generated emails and Word reports closed a gap that had sat outside design's remit entirely — so Engage's brand and component patterns held consistent end-to-end, not just on screen.
Key learnings
A design system only stays trustworthy if someone keeps watching how it's used. Branching changes and reviewing analytics regularly is what let me catch drift before it spread. And pushing the same discipline into GemBox-generated documents proved the approach travels well beyond the canvas.
Role
Lead UX Designer
Category
Engage · Design System