Rebuilding a Platform's Design Foundation

Rebuilding a Platform's Design Foundation A cross-functional redesign of ElevationChurch.org's design foundation — built to support a platform serving over 1.3M monthly page views across its core user journeys. Through system evaluation, component design, and close collaboration with engineering, I contributed to rebuilding the product on a more scalable, accessible foundation. My Role UX Designer + Design System Lead I contributed to the platform-wide redesign as part of Elevation's UX team, working alongside designers and engineers to rebuild the product experience end to end. Within that effort, I individually led the evaluation and selection of the new design system's component library. Through research, cross-team collaboration, and iterative system design, I helped translate a fragmented, inconsistent product into a unified design language built to scale. The Process Understanding the Foundation Before rebuilding anything, I focused on understanding where the existing product was breaking down — where components had drifted out of sync, where patterns had grown inconsistent, and what a platform at this scale actually needed to hold up. Through audit, stakeholder conversations, and engineering input, I explored: How existing components and patterns had diverged across the site Where inconsistency was slowing down design and development What a platform seeing roughly 254K monthly page views and 98K monthly unique users on the homepage alone needed from its foundation The technical constraints of our existing React stack By approaching the problem at the system level, I was able to identify what the new foundation needed to solve for before a single component was designed. Evaluating the System Using insights from the audit and engineering conversations, I led the evaluation of component libraries for the new build, focused on: Component maturity and long-term maintainability Built-in accessibility support Brand-flexible theming Fit with our existing React stack I evaluated the leading options against these criteria and made the case for MUI as the foundation going forward — a decision that shaped how the entire team would design and build from that point on. Building the System Working with the broader design and engineering team, I helped design and document the new system, focused on: A scalable, reusable component library Consistent design tokens across typography, color, and spacing Accessible-by-default patterns Clear documentation for design-to-dev handoff Each decision was made with intention — balancing design flexibility, technical constraints, and long-term maintainability. Final Outcome The result was a 200+ component design system that replaced years of accumulated inconsistency with a single, shared design language across the product. By combining system-level thinking with close collaboration across design and engineering, I helped give Elevation's product and design teams a scalable foundation to build on — one built to support the platform's core user journeys well beyond this redesign. Client: Elevation Church Deliverables: Design System Audit, Component Library Evaluation, Design System, Component Documentation, Design-Engineering Collaboration Year: 2024 Role: UX Designer