How a human-centered strategy unified 70+ properties, revitalized delivery teams, and cut departmental costs by 20%.
Client details are private under an NDA.
Duration: 18+ Months
Team Structure: Newly-formed in-house design team integrated with
business units and IT stakeholders.
Strategy & Vision
Team Building & Revitalization
Executive Communication
Delivery Operational Support
A leading insurance provider faced a critical challenge: a fragmented digital ecosystem of 70+ disconnected websites and applications. This created a confusing user experience and, behind the scenes, had fostered a culture of burnout. Inefficient, siloed teams were duplicating work, constantly fighting fires, missing critical deadlines, and struggling under the weight of an unmanageable system.
The initial plan was a simple technical migration. However, this approach would have only moved the chaos to a new platform, failing to address the root causes of team burnout and strategic misalignment.
As the design leader, I made the case for a strategic pivot. My primary contribution was shifting the project from a technology-led migration to a human-centered transformation, focusing first on the people and processes. Before we could fix the customer experience, we had to fix the employee experience and establish a sustainable way of working. This decision was the project's turning point.
The project was framed as a technical migration, but the root issue was team burnout from a broken workflow. I shifted the focus: before fixing the customer experience, we had to fix the employee experience.
We rebuilt the team's way of working by introducing a co-creative process and modern tools (Figma, Miro). This led to a single, shared design system that eliminated rework and restored work-life balance.
Instead of a top-down mandate to unify dozens of business units, I used a grassroots approach focused on human connection. An honest conversation over lunch did more to build a partnership than any formal presentation.
With the team and stakeholders aligned, we executed a phased migration for 70+ properties. We established a robust governance model for the design system, ensuring a sustainable, collaborative way of working.
This project presented two defining challenges: one of systemic burnout across the delivery teams, and another of deep fragmentation across the business.
The internal creative and development teams were caught in a cycle of overwork. The lack of a central system created endless rework, conflicting priorities, and a constant state of firefighting that led to frequently missed deadlines. Morale was at an all-time low, and the business was feeling the impact of the delays. My first priority was to address this internal conflict by redesigning our workflow. I introduced a co-creative process, design-tool modernization (Figma and Miro), and a single, shared design system that brought designers, developers, and business stakeholders together from day one, eliminating silos and establishing a single source of truth. This approach made the work saner, reducing wasted effort and allowing the team to reclaim their work-life balance.
Securing alignment across dozens of business units, each with its own priorities, was a monumental task. To build trust, I focused on creating human connections. I once shared half a sandwich with a skeptical marketing lead during a lunch break, which led to an honest conversation that did more to build our partnership than any formal presentation could have. As he put it:
"I finally understood you were here to solve our problems, not just create more rules for us."
This grassroots approach was essential for unifying the disparate groups around a shared vision.
The core challenge was to design a single, cohesive design system that could serve over 70 unique properties. Our research identified Marketing and Creative Teams as the primary personas. By solving for their need to create and launch campaigns quickly and independently, we could create a ripple effect of efficiency for the entire organization.
| Role | Core Job (JTBD) | Key Design System Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing Manager (Primary) | Quickly launch a new product campaign page without relying on IT. | Utilized pre-built, flexible templates, enabling self-service page creation and a 60% reduction in developer dependency. |
| Content Creator | Update site content and ensure it looks consistent with the brand. | Leveraged Design system core components, ensuring brand and accessibility compliance was "baked in." |
| Business Unit Lead | Ensure my division's specific needs are met within the new ecosystem. | A clear governance and contribution model allowed for the addition of new components to the system, ensuring scalability. |
| IT Developer | Reduce redundant work and focus on high-value engineering tasks. | A single, coded source of truth eliminated one-off builds, freeing up development resources and improving team efficiency by 15%. |
The project's success was driven by establishing a new, centralized design function that acted as a strategic partner.
Before building, we ran workshops with functions across the company to deeply understand their unique needs, goals, and pain points, ensuring our solutions were grounded in real-world requirements.
My primary role was to build and scale the design team, defining its structure, hiring talent, and establishing the operational processes.
The project's focus was shifted from a technical task to a holistic user experience transformation. I established a clear UX vision and a robust governance model to ensure consistency.
I organized regular governance calls with senior leadership for guidance and a parallel group with peers from different departments to collaboratively solve problems.
We developed a phased migration roadmap and a strict contribution model for the design system to ensure the new ecosystem would be sustainable.
The new team delivered a unified ecosystem and a robust design system that solved the company's most significant digital challenges, resulting in a 20% reduction in departmental costs.
The most lasting impact, however, was the cultural shift. The project proved that a human-centered approach could succeed where purely technical solutions had failed. We didn't just deliver a new set of websites; we delivered a new, more collaborative, and sustainable way of working, leaving behind a revitalized team ready to tackle the next challenge.
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