In 2019 Charles Schwab offered a growing range of products across brokerage, retirement, trading, and advice, and inconsistencies between products and teams were creating design and development debt every day. The goal was a core design system that is flexible, scalable, and shareable across Schwab products on different platforms.

Schwab was new to the idea of a design system, so our team of a design director and three designers promoted the concept across the company: hand-drafted ideas, many rounds of review, and weekly presentations to teams and stakeholders. I was the lead designer, responsible for all the mock-ups and visual design, and collaborated on the roadmap and governance plan.

The strategy was to apply consistent typography, colors, grid, and spacing to existing products, such as Account Summary and Intelligent Portfolio, to demonstrate the value of a design system.