Role: Design Lead (UI)
I led the design and delivery of a unified design system to improve consistency and accessibility across multiple citizen-facing government services.
Context & Challenge
MSD’s portfolio of digital products had significant visual inconsistency and accessibility gaps. Without shared UI patterns or governance, teams repeatedly rebuilt similar components, increasing rework and jeopardising WCAG compliance. The brief was to unify design standards, improve accessibility, and establish sustainable processes, all within a constrained delivery window and across multiple stakeholder groups.
Approach & Decisions
My team conducted UI audits to surface key pain points and align priorities. From that, we:
- Defined and built a core design system with reusable components, documentation, and guidelines.
- Introduced governance processes to embed accessibility (WCAG) checks into delivery workflows.
- Set visual standards for illustrations, icons, spacing, and typography to reduce ad-hoc variation.
- Mentored designers and engineers to accelerate adoption and raise baseline quality.
Design decisions were grounded in real usage patterns and accessibility imperatives rather than stylistic preference.
Outcome & Impact
- ~30% improvement in UI consistency across services, reducing cognitive load for users and teams
- ~25% reduction in design rework as teams reused system components
- Accessibility compliance increased from ~70% to ~95%, significantly reducing risk and improving service access
- Governance approach adopted across delivery units to sustain quality over time
Reflection
Success wasn’t just the artefacts we shipped, it was embedding a repeatable process. Prioritising governance and accessible patterns ensured the design system didn’t sit on a shelf but became a working tool that elevated delivery across MSD.