The Challenge
When I joined ResMan in 2021, the company didn’t have a design system. They’d never had one. And over a decade without one showed. Developers built duplicate pages instead of working from shared libraries. Components were inconsistent across the product. Everyone knew the problem. There was no systematic approach to design at scale.
“There was no systematic approach to design at scale.”
Building or updating features meant custom work every time. Design supported where we could, but more design time wasn’t the answer. The answer was a design system. But not yet.
The Approach
By 2023, design explorations for a comprehensive platform redesign were taking shape. Building a design system earlier wouldn’t have worked — there was nothing stable to build against. Now there was. We didn’t have funding for the redesign yet — but a design system could mean we’d be ready to execute fast when it came.
“No one asked me to build it. I saw the need and started building.”
No one asked me to build it. I saw the need and started building. I brought early progress to CEO Janel Ganim — I’d established trust through prior work, and she supported completing the effort. Working with senior designer Alvin Lee, I led the effort. Before building anything, we studied industry-leading design systems — Material, Polaris, Atlassian, and others. Not to copy them, but to understand how they were constructed, documented, and used at scale.
The Foundation (2023)
I timed the build deliberately. Componentizing a design system against a moving target means starting over every time something changes. I waited until the redesign direction was stable enough to build against — not finalized, but close enough that we wouldn’t be chasing revisions. Then we moved fast.
"We build ResMan's first design system."
We built ResMan’s first design system in Figma — complete and ready for use by both designers and developers. Developers began building a matching component library in code, so they could stop rebuilding the same things from scratch. The system enabled 4x faster design delivery. Instead of building everything custom, we had ready-made components — design, prototyping, feedback, and handoff all took a fraction of the time.
The Legacy (2024)
ResMan’s existing product still needed updates. The legacy product had a different visual language than the planned redesign. So I again partnered with Alvin to build a second design system - this one for the existing product. The legacy design system gave everyone who touched it ready-made building blocks — so they could focus on the design rather than building the pieces for it. The system expanded what the team could deliver without expanding the team.
The Scale (2025)
Inhabit, ResMan’s parent company, put me in charge of building one design system for all 16 companies in their portfolio. Different products, different teams, different needs — one system to serve all of them. Alvin and I built the core component library in Figma, covering the majority of primary components. The work was nearing completion when organizational changes occurred in early 2026.
The Transition
In early 2026, Inhabit centralized design operations across their portfolio. My Principal Designer role at ResMan was eliminated as part of broader restructuring. I knew building a centralized design system that worked without me might cost me my job. I built it anyway.
"I built it anyway."
The Takeaways
See what’s needed before anyone asks.
No one asked for a design system. They needed one all along.
Set others up for success.
Developers had a foundation to build from. PMs could build screens without struggling. Success isn’t always what you personally produce — it’s what the team can deliver because of what you built.
Ideas don’t get funded. Plans do.
I built every system so it could work without me. When my role was eliminated, nothing I’d built depended on me.
The Design Systems work proved what I bring to every initiative: build what scales, build what others can use, build what lasts.