Automate. Simplify. Reduce.

As part of our commitment to building a high-performing design culture, I led the integration of Figma with our codebase via a REST API to eliminate manual touchpoints thereby improving execution speed and quality. This project was driven by the need to enhance operational efficiency, improve design system maturity, and set a high standard for design consistency across our teams and platforms.

Empowering Design System Maturity through KPIs and Stakeholder Alignment

To secure buy-in, I developed KPIs to quantify the success of our design operations, focusing on metrics such as cost avoidance, reusability scoring, design consistency, and tech and design debt reduction. These KPIs proved crucial in gaining stakeholder support, allowing us to expand the initiative and elevate the maturity of our design system.

Current State

Before this integration, the team faced inefficiencies in manually syncing design assets, leading to errors, delays, and resource drain.

When in Doubt, Map it Out

We had to set a standard for best practices in cross-functional collaboration by accurately mapping between Figma components and codebase elements hosted across various tools such as Storybook, Airtable, GitHub, and our headless CMS.

Future State

With the REST API integration, design updates made in Figma automatically synced with the codebase, streamlining alignment across design and engineering. This improvement allowed team members to focus on high-priority projects, minimize congestion in the backlog, and cut costs to maintain, and mature, our design system.

Phase 1 complete, Phase 2 in action

This connection was momumental to the evolution of our workflows and design system maturity. Phase 1 was focused on variables, which contain only tokens. The next stage of this project will be including components, and then eventually patterns.

The Result

This project underscored the value of design operations in driving consistency, efficiency, and cross-functional team collaboration. This investment in automation resulted in the enablement of the team to focus on creative problem-solving and producing high-quality work.

25%

Cost Avoidance

per agile delivery cycle

40%

Workload Reduction

in backlog quantity

80%+

Consistency Score

across all brands

Personal

Reflection

This experience solidified my belief that effective design operations are essential to a high-functioning design team. The biggest challenges were getting stakeholder buy-in and not getting carried away with our long term vision. Sometimes what may seem small, like automating general styling, has a drastic impact. First you crawl, then you walk, then you run.

View All Work

Developing the Figma-Codebase Bridge