From One Designer to a Team of Five
Building the team, the design system and the process behind a usability overhaul.
- 1 → 5 Designers, from just me to a full team
- Junior → Mid A designer I mentored, promoted with a raise
- 50% faster To pick a paused project back up (2–3 days to 1 day) Estimate
The problem
There was no design system, and it showed. Fonts, colors, modals and buttons didn’t match, there was no clear primary or secondary button, and the flows were confusing. The site needed a usability overhaul that one designer couldn’t deliver alone.
Building the team
I hired for complex work and for complementary skills, using a live design challenge on a product like ours to see how candidates thought in real time. New designers got daily check-ins, introductions to key stakeholders, and support in their first meetings.
One junior designer grew into leading large projects on her own and earned a promotion to mid level.
The design system
I built the design system in Figma early, covering color, typography and every component. Weekly design reviews kept the team on one standard and gave each designer a place for feedback. The uniform builder, order tracking, and filters and product selection were all built on it.
Documentation
Restarting a paused project used to take two or three days of meetings. I set up Monday.com boards for every project and for our developers. Picking a project back up dropped to about a day.
What I learned
A design system is only as strong as the habits around it. The components gave us consistency, but the weekly reviews are what kept five designers working to one standard.