Creating systematic impact and value as a Design System leader
When I joined FreeAgent, a design system was more of a concept than a functioning practice. We had no shared UI kit, no shared component library, no tokens, and little documentation. Product designers recreated components from scratch (or in code), engineers built UI inconsistently across teams, and product teams made decisions without a shared foundation.
Despite having a strong design and engineering culture, FreeAgent lacked a connective tissue that would enable consistent, scalable, and efficient delivery. Especially as the company grew its ambition to build a more premium product.
I saw an opportunity to not just to improve our visual and interaction language, but to fundamentally change how design and engineering collaborated. I knew design systems could accelerate product velocity, reduce design/tech debt, and lift quality across the entire company. So I made it my mission to help FreeAgent understand the value of systematic design and to build the structures, tools, and relationships needed to turn that vision into reality.
The starting point
Before the design system existed:
We had no UI kit in Figma, with every team designing buttons, tables, modals, and layouts differently.
There was no concept of tokens, making consistency and theming extremely hard.
Documentation was nonexistent, resulting in varying interpretations of components and patterns.
Engineers were building one-off implementations, increasing maintenance costs.
Product teams were solving similar problems differently, creating a fractured experience.
Dependencies between design, engineering, and product created delays and rework.
The company was shipping, but not systematically.
Building a case for a Design System
Design systems were not yet widely understood or valued across FreeAgent. I spent time:
Working directly with design leadership to explain why a design system mattered
Showing real examples of fragmentation and how it impacted users
Demonstrating the business value: faster delivery, consistency, reduced tech debt
Highlighting the strategic benefit: supporting complex features at scale
Building trust with engineers, PMs, and designers through collaboration
Rather than treating a design system as a side project, I positioned it as critical infrastructure and something that would help us scale efficiently and deliver a polished and premium product experience.
This advocacy helped lay a foundation for leadership to approve the formation of a dedicated design system team, and I became one of the early drivers of its direction and execution.
Why I wanted to work in this space
I had an obsession with design systems and always wanted to move from a product designer role to focus on design systems. I knew they sat at the intersection of design quality, engineering efficiency, and business value and they let me:
Create design solutions that scale across the entire product, not just one feature or team
Improve standards and workflows for designers, engineers, and PMs
Reduce long-term complexity and inconsistency
Support teams in delivering work faster and more confidently
Build clarity, cohesion, and a sense of craft across the company
Create better, consistent quality products for our customers.
Design Systems could let me have strategic impact, not just product impact, and building that capability inside FreeAgent was both a challenge and an opportunity that I cared deeply about as the company was scaling.
The impact I created while maturing a system
Here’s a bullet-proof set of outcomes that captures some of the value I delivered. These can also be witnessed deeper across my portfolio.
Established FreeAgent's first Figma UI kit, enabling consistent design across teams and speeding up the design and development process
Created foundational documentation and guidelines that standardised design and engineering workflows
Designed our FreeStyle reference website that enabled designers and engineers to quickly get what they needed, quickly.
Improved product quality and cohesion across features by aligning teams to shared patterns
Reduced UI inconsistencies across FreeAgent by driving systemic adoption
Introduced design tokens, laying the groundwork for a consistent design language, future theming, and scalability
Delivered core user experience improvements (e.g., tables, reports, date pickers, bulk actions) using systemised components
Reduced design and engineering rework through reusable, reliable components
Strengthened collaboration between design and engineering through shared standards
Lowered maintenance burden by replacing bespoke UI with unified system patterns
Enabled teams to deliver more confidently and with higher quality by giving them strong foundations
Supported the company’s long-term goal of scaling to a premium product experience
Overall outcome
Improved operational and product experience outcomes across businesses