How do you grow a design system from reusable components into an organisational capability?
Senior UI and UX work across the design system and FCA-regulated journeys of one of the UK's biggest insurers, helping scale reusable patterns, accessibility, and design-dev collaboration across the organisation.
Project frame: One of the UK's biggest insurers: scaling a multi-brand design system across regulated products
Role
Senior UI Designer · Mid UX Designer
Team
Design lead · Designers · Developers · Product · Compliance
Year
Nov 2023 to Oct 2025
Platform
Design system · Web · FCA-regulated journeys
11
team growth
Helped grow the design system capability into an 11-person team.
Multi-brand
organisation scale
Scaled reusable components and patterns across the organisation and multiple brands.
FCA
compliance-led design
Embedded regulatory requirements into scalable, accessible journeys.
Daily
design clinics
Supported adoption through tutorials and daily clinics for designers and developers.
Reconstructed artifact · Design system
01 — Context
The problem
A design system only matters if people can adopt it, trust it, and ship with it. One of the UK's biggest insurers needed reusable components and patterns that worked across brands, satisfied accessibility and FCA requirements, and made delivery easier for designers and developers.
02 — Evidence
What shaped the direction
Component quality
Led UI design for reusable components and patterns in a Figma-based system, with accessibility and consistency at the centre.
Adoption model
Onboarded designers and developers through tutorials and daily clinics, with documentation as the backstop rather than the whole plan.
Stakeholder buy-in
Used time-saving metrics to secure senior stakeholder support for further design-system investment.
Regulated journey work
Partnered with product, engineering, and compliance across discovery, prototyping, validation, and delivery.
03 — Process
How it came together
The brief
At one of the UK's biggest insurers, I worked first as a Mid UX Designer on
FCA-regulated financial journeys, then as a Senior UI Designer helping grow the
design system capability alongside the design lead. The work was both craft and
adoption: design the components well, then help the organisation use them well.
Reconstructed artifact · Design system
NDA-safe reconstruction of reusable components, patterns, and tokens for multi-brand delivery.
Scaling quality through a system
I led UI design for reusable components and patterns in a Figma-based system,
with accessibility, consistency, and FCA compliance built in. The goal was
better implementation quality and faster, more coherent delivery across product
teams and brands, with the component library as the means.
Helping teams actually adopt it
A system only works when people use it correctly. I helped onboard designers and
developers through tutorials and daily clinics, giving teams a practical path to
adopt the system while improving design-dev collaboration.
Making the case for investment
The work used time-saving metrics to show senior stakeholders why continued
investment mattered. That helped grow the design system into an 11-person team
and strengthened the connection between design quality, delivery efficiency, and
regulated product outcomes.
04 — Craft
Decision trail
01Focused on reusable, accessible Figma components and patterns that could scale across brands instead of solving each journey as a one-off.
02Treated adoption as a product problem, using tutorials and daily clinics to help designers and developers use the system well.
03Used time-saving metrics to translate system quality into a business case senior stakeholders could support.
04Embedded FCA and compliance needs into flows early, so regulated design was structural rather than a late-stage approval gate.
05 — Impact
Outcome
The work improved design-dev collaboration, implementation quality, and multi-brand consistency while helping one of the UK's biggest insurers grow its design system capability into an 11-person team.
▲11person system team
Multi-brandscaled adoption
FCAregulated journeys
Details are under NDA — shown here as outcomes and ratings, without confidential specifics.