2018 Cox Automotive design system
Goal: Establish a centralized source of components and guidelines, for the designers and engineers buiding out our product suite
Summary
- I drove organization-wide adoption of the enterprise design system through proactive outreach that built trust and alignment across design and engineering
- I partnered with React developers and product teams to balance technical precision with usability
- I grounded my decisions in research, helping transform the system into critical infrastructure that improved design and front-end efficiency by 3X
- I exercised influence without authority to champion collaboration, consistency, and scalable design practices that shaped future unified products
Key outcomes
3X
Tripled the efficiency of product design and front-end development
300
Used by over 300 projects across 5 business units, over a period of several years
The problem space
As we worked towards a unified product suite for our dealership end-users, Cox Automotive needed common guidelines and components.
Engineers and designers needed a unified source of truth to maximize their impact, but React and Sketch resources had been evolving under separate teams.
My role and my partners
To create a unified system and documentation website, I led outreach to designers and engineers across the org, while conducting research, writing guidelines, and designing some of the system's components.
I worked hand-in-hand with React developers on the team, teamed up with a UX writer to build out content guidelines, and collaborated at every practical step with the engineers and designers who would adopt the system.
Research
- I moderated interviews with engineers and designers to inform the design of the system's website
- I executed surveys with dealership end-users, to guide our decisions around design patterns
- I immersed myself in comparative design systems from orgs like IBM, Salesforce, and Shopify
- I also immersed myself in UX fundamentals, including accessibility, data density, UX writing, and component-specific patterns
Adoption
- I hosted regular communications with designers to help them adopt the system, including onboarding sessions with new hires
- I gathered and posted design system success stories to influence decision makers
- I communicated my research efforts to highlight the objectivity of design system decisions
Outcomes
- By 2020, the system had been used by over 300 projects across 5 business units
- The product suite had become noticeably more consistent, as noted by stakeholders and our business users
- Designers came to rely on the system to solve the most common problems, freeing their resources to innovate
- The move toward consistency served as a precursor to future products like Retail 360
My takeaways
Working on a large design system taught me that leadership often means influencing without authority. Supporting dozens of designers and developers forced me to balance competing concerns, making decisions that could stand up to scrutiny and drive adoption.
When I later joined a product team that used the system I'd helped build, I saw its strengths and pain points firsthand.
That experience deepened my respect for design systems as living products. These are not just sets of rules to enforce, but frameworks that succeed only when they empower others to create with confidence.
Stakeholder quote
[The system] reduced new project startup from 2 weeks to 10 minutes.
Product Owner