Year
2023
Timeline
≈ 4 months to V.1.
Role
Sr. Product Designer
The problem
Patients with hypoparathyroidism take daily injections for life. They manage dosing, rotation sites, blood work, and healthcare appointments, often while dealing with brain fog and fatigue.
An app that genuinely supported them could make a real difference.
I inherited a concept that looked complete from the outside: user research done, style guide handed over, features listed.
But the features had no logic behind them, the regulatory implications hadn't been considered, and the visual direction had nothing to do with who would actually be using it.
The solution
One foundational Design System that could be configured to any client’s brand.
Following the release, every project started from the same reliable base: same style & variable naming, same components, structure and setup. It enabled faster design and development, allowing more time for the creative part of the process.
The system also doubled as our wireframing library, letting us share and test concepts with clients without revealing the final brand direction.
The how
Starting point: A library of the core components found across all previous projects.
Having built a design system before at Learningbank, I knew the biggest risk wasn't building too little but building too much, and ending up with irrelevant components.
We deliberately scoped V1 to the components that appeared in every project, leaving edge cases for later. I focused on the structural foundation (variables, naming conventions, cross-project consistency) while my colleague built out most of the components we prioritized.
Would a shared design system mean we deliver white-labeled apps? The opposite.
Brand definition always comes first, with the system having to adapt to the brand, not the other way around. The goal was never to replace creative work but to eliminate the repetitive setup. The core library covers around 70% of components consistent across projects, leaving room to adapt or create new ones for each brand's needs.
Here's how that looked in practice for my IBD client app:
From a design tool to shared infrastructure across design and development
V1 solved the design team's problem. V2 extended it to developers. There was back and forth on how to structure the JSON files and align variable naming between design and code, but once that was settled, developers could implement components directly from the system. What started as a way to speed up design setup became a shared foundation for the whole product team.