Resurrecting a Multi-Brand Design System to Unlock 1,800+ Hours of Efficiency

The Process

I identified that this wasn't a "design" problem—it was an operational risk. The priority was to safeguard the investment the business had put into the design system, and ensure the IP and management methods remained accessible outside of individuals.

Technical Deep Dive & Self-Education

I put myself through an intensive bootcamp to upskill in:

• Advanced Figma Systems: Understanding the Figma functionality and features available to enable design systems, as well as industry best practice.

• Multi-Brand Token Architecture: Understanding how tokens flowed across different brand themes, breakpoints and individual components to then integrate with Supernova.

• Supernova.io: Learning how the previous team had structured the documentation platform to bridge Figma and Storybook.

The AI Accelerator

I used AI as a "Technical Writer" to help me codify complex workflows into readable guides. This allowed me to deliver a full operations manual in 3 weeks instead of 6.

• Architecture Mapping: I fed AI the technical specs of our token architecture. I used it to generate clear, standardized explanations of how these tokens functioned across different brands and breakpoints so that any designer could understand the logic.

• Figma Workflow Standardization: I used AI to draft step-by-step guides for key Figma processes:

  • Branching & Merging: How to safely make updates at both a token and component level.

  • Publishing & Consumption: How to push updates without disrupting other squads, and the dependancies within the system.

• Governance Protocols: It wasn't enough to just document the "how"; I had to establish the "who" and the "when”. This included charting feedback loops with SMEs, and when to involve key decision makers from across the business. The goal was ensuring that every addition to the system was vetted for consistency and production-parity before being merged.