A boot-strapped BI product had become a sprawling mess. We planned to announce the ability to enable theming and embedding in late November, which was 7 weeks away.

We dug into the needs for a design system across the product team, did usability studies of the existing product, and an audit of all components and styles.

The audit revealed a jaw-dropping number of concerns; 120+ background colors, 42+ type styles, 25 button styles, 17 inputs, 15 selects (and ongoinig..) This would make theming and embedding nearly impossible without urgent intervention.

The dev team was concerned this process would slow them down and require significant re-work. The audit allowed engineers to see the current process was inefficient, requiring custom solutions for every feature.

With their buy-in, we worked to establish a system that was useable, maintainable and scaleable, working across mobile and desktop.

Theming and embedding launched on time. Pace of feature launch increased. User experience significantly improved. Engineers able to make independent decisions without the design team.