Introducing the system

In order to make the product truly scalable, we needed to come up with a design system that would match the needs for each individual brand, while keeping the flexibility to adopt specifics for each market. So we kick-started the creation of a white-label design system first.

This way we could take the defined components and quickly apply variables such as colors and fonts, strokes to match the needs of the individual brand. However, this also introdced additional complexity - the component updated would need to cascade down from one library to another.

This in turn meant that we needed to manage the update cycle to avoid inconsistencies among brands. For example, one brand could use the latest update batch, whereas another would fall behind. To mitigate this we did the following:

introduced DRI to merge the design updates and release on a fixed weekly cadence;

review system component updates or additions in a design review rituals;

onboard a front-end lead to add new or changed components to the backlog of the UI-kit.

Applying the framework

Once the design system collaboration framework was introdced, I could start to work on product changes. My task was to oversee the Account management. Working with regional stakeholders I gathered the technical & business requirements, and translated those into the white label design, which in the first iteration I adopted for MultiOpticas brand, and later on scaled to multiple other regions.