CONTEXT + PROBLEM

Business Problem: Yahoo’s ad tech tools were inconsistent, inefficient, and hard to maintain. Multiple teams worked off different design libraries, leading to redundant tools, wasted time, and higher dev costs.

People Problem: Designers were constantly detaching components, suffering from poor documentation, and lacked a single source of truth. Design maturity was low, and collaboration was difficult.

My Role: Design system lead (alongside 1 PM + 1 visual designer):

• Drove the Figma migration

• Designed the component library

• Led training, advocacy, accessibility audits

• Created documentation and system principles

GOALS + CONTRAINTS

Goals:

• Consolidate tools

• Speed up product development

• Improve design quality + accessibility

• Increase collaboration and adoption

Constraints

• Migrated mid-rebrand (Verizon branding retired)

• Figma learning curve for many designers

• Leadership wanted 6–12 month project done in 3

APPROACH

Principles:

• Make frequent choices efficient

• Favor usability over maintenance

• Bake in visual decisions

• Bridge gaps between design and code

Design Tactics:

• Separated distinct variants (e.g., button styles) for faster drag-and-droP

• Used labels, emoji, and screenshots to enhance discoverability

• Created interactive prototypes for non-design stakeholders

• Added metadata (Gear, Cog, Settings, etc.) to support diverse vocabularies

• Surface GitHub links to enable cross-functional collaboration

Culture Work:

• Co-created with designers across teams to build trust

• Advocates presented at meetings, not just you

• Added a versioning system to boost transparency and reduce fear of updates

• Kept documentation at a 4th-grade reading level to promote clarity and inclusion

OUTCOME

• Migrated from Sketch to Figma successfully

• High system adoption with little-to-no component detachment

• Data table component alone had over 18,000 uses and only 22 detachments

• Advocates on every team helped scale support without you being a bottleneck

REFLECTION

What I’d change:

• Invest earlier in design tokens

• Plan for responsiveness earlier

• Build documentation in real-time to prevent backlog

What I learned:

• Design systems live or die by company culture

• The best system isn’t just scalable—it’s usable

• Trust is the foundation; everything else is maintenance