Design system
Mortar design system
Unifying 5 fragmented products
Client
Policygenius
Role
Product owner, Design lead
Collaborators
Leigh-Ann Bartsch (Design), Patrick Kim (Eng), Steven Howell (Eng)
Problem
Policygenius's rapid growth had led to a fragmented user experience across five different applications. Our research showed that these inconsistencies were actively eroding user trust and limiting sales conversion. Behind the scenes, maintaining different UI libraries across multiple applications was creating inefficient development cycles and slowing our ability to improve the product.
Approach
Rather than attempting to create the perfect design system from scratch, we took a pragmatic approach focused on the quickest path to a unified experience. Through a comprehensive audit of existing components and styles, we identified not just the inconsistencies, but also the areas where our current solutions were working well. The key insight was that successful adoption would depend on minimizing the changes required for each individual app.
Solution
We created a unified design system that balanced immediate adoption needs with long-term scalability. We prioritized the most fundamental decisions – like naming conventions and component behavior – where future changes would be most disruptive. For more contentious styling issues, we often deferred to existing approaches, creating a foundation we could iterate on once the system was adopted.
To ensure successful implementation, I assembled a team with engineering representatives from each codebase. Within four months, we had created our core styles and atomic components, covering about 80% of the UI across all products.
Impact
4x faster
rollout of updates
All five applications adopted the new system within six weeks of launch – a testament to our pragmatic approach. The real validation came months later when we deployed significant updates to our font and button styles. Changes that would have previously required weeks of coordination across teams were now implemented within a single sprint. The success of this approach became the subject of my talk at the 2021 FinTech Design Summit, "Design Systems as Products."
