PROBLEM
As the company grew and new teams were established, maintaining consistency and cohesion in design became increasingly difficult. At the same time, the marketing team initiated a full rebrand after refining the company’s market positioning.
Case Study: STOA Design System Setup
STOA, A platform designed to streamline real estate transactions. I led the design of the customer-facing product, which included tools that enabled real estate investors to manage projects, upload document documents, record transactions, and search for deals.
As the company scaled, we moved away from relying on internal teams to manually enter data into spreadsheets and Salesforce. I helped expand the design team to create internal tools that centralized data and streamlined operations, improving efficiency across the organization.
GOAL
I seized this opportunity to lead the creation of a design system that ensured a unified look and feel across all products. The system was also built with accessibility in mind, accounting for WCAG standards to make our products more inclusive and user-friendly.
COLLABORATION
Working closely with the marketing team, I led communication and translated rebrand requirements for the product and engineering teams. I created a rebrand guideline for teams to reference and began building a design system in Figma. In collaboration with engineering, we drew inspiration from Google’s Material UI to establish the foundation of the system. Because building and managing components was highly time-intensive, I led an external (outsourced) team to support the effort.
DESIGN
Alongside building the design system, I updated the existing UI with new rebrand elements and shared the branding guidelines with other teams. Through an iterative approach, I was able to deliver the rebrand in just three months—a fast turnaround that ensured quality without slowing down product development.
Throughout the process, I also accounted for accessibility standards, ensuring the new design system supported inclusive and user-friendly experiences.
RESULT
The design system was quickly adopted across teams, reducing design inconsistencies, cutting handoff time for engineering, and improving overall efficiency in shipping features.