A shared component language across a portfolio of internal tax applications.
The company maintained multiple internal tax applications serving different user groups and workflows. These applications shared common UI patterns and components but lacked consistency in implementation, visual style, and interaction behavior. A shared design system was needed to ensure consistency, improve development efficiency, and provide a cohesive experience across products.
Problem
Without a unified design system, the organization faced several challenges: inconsistent UI patterns and visual styles across applications, duplicated effort as teams rebuilt similar components, difficulty maintaining quality and accessibility standards, slower development velocity due to rebuilding common patterns, and fragmented user experience across the product ecosystem.
Organized the system into three layers — Foundations (basic tokens), Components (reusable UI elements), and Patterns (composed workflows). This hierarchy made it easy for teams to understand where to look for different types of guidance.
Prioritized components common in enterprise applications: data tables, complex forms, multi-step workflows, and document management interfaces. These addressed the specific needs of tax and financial software.
Created documentation templates that included usage guidelines, accessibility considerations, implementation code, and examples. This ensured consistency and helped teams understand not just what components existed, but when and how to use them.
Established a process where designers and engineers collaborated on component development from the start. This ensured components were both visually consistent and technically feasible.
Impact
The design system improved consistency across internal applications through reusable components and interaction patterns. Key outcomes included more consistent user experience across the product suite, reduced time to design and build common UI patterns, improved accessibility through standardized components, better collaboration between design and engineering teams, and a foundation for faster feature development in existing and new products.