Basis Design System

Building a design system from the ground up

 

Basis is an enterprise SaaS platform that helps media organizations manage planning, reporting, billing, and campaign operations. As the platform expanded, teams had independently created UI patterns that solved immediate product needs but lacked a shared system, making the experience increasingly difficult to scale.

 

I led the creation of Basis's first cross-functional design system while continuing to design enterprise workflows across the platform, ensuring the system evolved alongside real product needs.

 

My Role
As a Senior Product Designer, I led the creation of Basis's first cross-functional design system while continuing to design complex enterprise workflows across the platform. I defined the system vision, implementation strategy, and phased adoption roadmap, partnering closely with product and engineering to establish shared UX standards and create a scalable foundation that could evolve alongside the product.

 

The Challenge
As Basis grew, products had evolved independently across teams, resulting in inconsistent interfaces, duplicated effort, and increasing design and engineering overhead. The organization needed more than a component library—it needed a shared design language, scalable processes, and a long-term strategy that could support future platform growth without disrupting ongoing product development.

 

The Solution
I established the vision, implementation strategy, and phased roadmap for Basis's first cross-functional design system, aligning system investments with active product development so teams could adopt reusable patterns incrementally while continuing to ship features. As new workflows were designed, successful solutions were incorporated back into the system, creating a continuous feedback loop between product design and the design system.

 

 

strategy and adoption

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Establishing a roadmap for long-term success

 

Building a design system required more than designing components—it required a clear strategy for introducing change across the organization.

 

I defined the vision, implementation roadmap, and phased rollout strategy that aligned design system work with active product initiatives. Rather than asking teams to stop feature work, the roadmap prioritized foundational improvements first and introduced reusable patterns incrementally as products continued to evolve.

 

This approach established organizational alignment, encouraged adoption through real product work, and created a sustainable path for long-term growth. Governance practices ensured new patterns were evaluated consistently, encouraging reuse while allowing the system to evolve alongside the platform.

 

 

accessibility audit

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Using accessibility to uncover systemic problem

 

Before building the design system, I conducted a comprehensive accessibility audit across the platform to better understand the quality and consistency of the existing experience.

 

The audit uncovered recurring usability and WCAG compliance issues—including inconsistent interaction patterns, inaccessible color combinations, missing focus states, and varying component behaviors. While the individual issues differed, many shared the same underlying cause: the platform lacked a common system for designing and building interfaces.

 

Rather than treating accessibility as a collection of isolated fixes, I used the findings to establish priorities for the design system roadmap. By solving common problems at the system level, future product work became more accessible by default.

 

 

 

foundations

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Creating a shared foundation

 

The accessibility audit reinforced the need for consistent design foundations across the platform.

 

I established shared standards for color, typography, spacing, iconography, and layout that created a common visual language for designers and engineers. These foundations reduced unnecessary variation while providing predictable building blocks for future components and product experiences.

 

With a consistent foundation in place, teams could design and build with greater confidence while reducing duplicated effort across products.

 

 

components

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Building reusable UI patterns

 

With shared foundations established, I created a reusable component library that supported the diverse needs of an enterprise platform.

 

Each component was designed to balance flexibility with consistency, allowing product teams to solve unique business problems without reinventing common interaction patterns. Components continued to evolve through real product work, ensuring the system remained practical, adaptable, and grounded in real customer needs.

 

 

documentation

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Making the system easy to adopt

 

A design system only succeeds when teams know how to use it.

 

I created documentation that explained not only how components worked, but when they should be used. Usage guidance, implementation examples, and design principles reduced ambiguity while improving collaboration between design and engineering.

 

Documentation evolved alongside the system, making adoption easier as the library expanded and new contributors joined the effort.

 

 

platform design

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Validating the system through product work

 

Building the design system and designing enterprise workflows happened in parallel.

 

Working directly on product initiatives allowed me to validate component patterns against real customer problems, refine interactions through user research and usability testing, and identify opportunities for additional systemization.

 

This continuous feedback loop ensured the design system remained grounded in real product needs while improving consistency across the broader platform.

 

 

outcomes and impact

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Lasting impact