Avalara Design System

My role

I was hired at Avalara to lead the creation of their company-wide design system from the ground up. Over seven years, I managed and scaled the initiative from inception to widespread adoption. I was responsible for the project strategy and design deliverables. I worked closely with stakeholders from product, design, and engineering to align roadmaps and review solutions.

The challenge

Avalara had a wide range of products accumulated over time, built on different platforms, and maintained by separate teams around the world. This fragmentation led to inconsistent experiences and redundant design and engineering efforts. Avalara needed to streamline the efficiency of its design and development teams and bring consistency to its growing suite of products. The creation and implementation of a design system was the proposed solution.

Goals

My goal was to build a custom, first-class design system tailored specifically to Avalara’s needs. The system would enable teams to deliver value more efficiently and introduce consistency across Avalara products. The business goals of the design system were to:

• Define best practices for product design and development
• Increase the velocity and efficiency of product design and development teams
• Improve consistency, accessibility, and user satisfaction across products
  
• Reduce company costs

Process highlights

I placed collaboration at the heart of the design system to ensure deliverables always provided optimal value for design system users. I adapted and introduced new strategies as the system matured, but many processes I established early on became essential to the success of the project:

• Created a design system project in Jira to triage requests, maintain a backlog of tasks, track progress, share status, and coordinate engineering handoff
• Cultivated trust across product, design, and engineering leads, meeting regularly to align priorities and review proposals for feedback and iteration
• Delivered thoroughly researched design solutions backed by best practices, including responsive behaviors and WCAG 2.1 Level AA accessibility standards
• Partnered with UX researchers to test design system solutions with Avalara users and gather user insights
• Led design system training for all UX hires, onboarded new team members, and mentored colleagues on design system usage and best practices

Deliverables

• Created design system principles, processes, and foundations, including color palette, typography, iconography, responsive page layout grids, contribution methods, and more
• Built a comprehensive Figma library featuring over 65 core components, hundreds of variants and subcomponents, and thousands of individual design assets
• Authored over 100 pages of detailed, public documentation at skylab.avalara.com, including usage guidelines, visual examples, and development specifications
• Led design system adoption across over 15 internal teams

Results

The Avalara design system is now an essential resource used daily by product and engineering teams to deliver consistent, accessible solutions with significantly increased efficiency and velocity. Key results included:

• Increased design and development velocity by 25 to 35%
• Added over 17 weeks of annual efficiency gains
• Generated $12M to $20M in annual cost savings
• Improved internal design system satisfaction scores by 69%
• Achieved 100% daily usage across core product and engineering teams
• Inspired a new policy requiring 100% of all new projects to use the design system
• Contributed to a 15% reduction in negative product feedback from customers
• Earned WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance certification
• Nominated for Avalara’s Excellence in Product Delivery award

Tools

• Design asset library: Figma, Sketch
• Design documentation: Zeroheight, Chat GPT
• UX research: Maze, Dovetail, Fullstory
• Development: Stencil, custom web elements, HTML, CSS, JavaScript XML, React
• Code repository: Custom SDK
• Supported frameworks: Angular, Ember, Javascript, React, Vue
• Development documentation: Custom website
• Prototyping: Webflow, HTML, CSS
• Project management: Jira, Confluence
• Communication and collaboration: Slack, Zoom, Miro

Testimonials

• "Will did an amazing job leading the Avalara design system, a resource used by thousands of employees across international teams. He works hard, collaborates kindly, and backs up decisions with data. He made my job infinitely easier."
  - Jerred Metts, UX Writer and Designer at Avalara
• "The Avalara design system is now the company standard, in no small part due to Will’s leadership. Will was an incredible design partner who consistently performed at a very high level."
  - Dan McKeon, Senior Software Engineer at Avalara
• "Will's leadership and keen attention to detail has been fundamental to our ability to unify numerous apps using the Avalara design system. He is a great partner and collaborator with other designers, product managers, and engineers."
  - Inga Johnson, Senior Project Manager at Avalara
• "Will’s vision and leadership have produced a first-rate design system at Avalara. He works with engineers early and provides comprehensive design specs, making handoff to engineering quick and easy."
  - Kirstin Anderson, Senior Software Engineer at Avalara
• "A true design system leader, Will excels at reflecting stakeholder needs in his designs to arrive at top-quality, reusable solutions. I've rarely seen a designer more in tune with the needs of both users and stakeholders than Will."
  - Christine Clifton-Thornton, Senior UX leader at Avalara
• "Will's work on the Avalara design system demonstrates thoughtfulness and an extraordinary attention to detail. The system is now used by teams across the globe. That great accomplishment is reflective of Will's dedication and hard work."
  - Abigail Hamilton, Principle UX Designer at Avalara