Overhauling IBM’s design ecosystem for modern product teams
By leveraging our transition to Figma as a catalyst, I co-led the efforts that established best-in-class design assets, libraries, and templates. This work went beyond technical solutions and required full alignment across independent business units to introduce scalable practices that could support long-term growth.
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What this project highlights
Operating as a volunteer, this leadership role came with no authority or forced adoption by different business units and software groups. I relied solely on skill and expertise alone to gain buy-in for the strategies and direction I provided. I believe deeply in fostering a culture of collaboration, contributing to shared success, and proactively improving systems that benefit everyone. This commitment drives me to proactively seek opportunities that improve systems for my team and the broader community.
Design chaos in a global organization
IBM’s design ecosystem faced deep-rooted challenges that made it difficult for product designers to produce their best work. Rather than focusing on user problems, designers would lose hours to finding assets and struggling to get components and libraries to work for them.
Fragmented Libraries
Design libraries were built and maintained inconsistently, leading to duplication of effort and inefficiencies. Without clear guidelines, teams struggled to share assets effectively across projects.
Lack of Ownership
Critical libraries, including mobile templates and email assets, lacked clear accountability, resulting in poor maintenance and usability. This lack of stewardship created gaps in quality and continuity.
Disconnected Teams
Independent groups like Carbon Core and IBM.com worked in silos, causing misalignment in strategies and practices. These silos led to redundancies and lost opportunities for collaboration.
Unstructured Workflows
Teams lacked consistent methods for sprint work, developer handoffs, and project organization, creating bottlenecks. These inefficiencies delayed timelines and reduced overall productivity.
Figma Underutilization
Without a unified strategy, teams missed opportunities to fully leverage Figma features that could cut their time to production in half.
Creating components, libraries, and templates that deliver consistency
Starting with the core Carbon library, we established foundational practices for building components, structuring libraries, assigning tokens, naming layers, and applying variables. These standards created a scalable framework, enabling us to expand these approaches across more than 30 libraries and templates, ensuring consistency and reliability in every design asset.
Standards and Best Practices
Comprehensive guidelines for library creation, maintenance, and sharing to ensure consistency and provide designers with clear direction for managing assets.
Asset & Library Status Tracking
This transparency streamlined communication and improved resource management.
Best-in-Class Design Assets
Advanced features like auto-layout, tokens, variants, and variables were leveraged to create modular, flexible design components. These adaptable assets met the diverse needs of teams and projects, ensuring scalability and alignment with IBM’s evolving requirements.
Attention to Every Detail
Every element, from file names and property labels to individual layer names, followed a set of clear guidelines. These standards ensured consistency and accuracy across all design assets, maintaining quality and reliability throughout the full eco-system.
Templates for success
Building templates for specific IBM assets and project workflows was an essential part of our success and get teams to adopt these assets and continue contributing to them.
Driven by passion, built
through collaboration
To support the community and drive collaboration through the process of realeasing and working with new Figma assets the following served as foundational pillars.
Figma Guild Website
Built and maintained a central location for designers to locate libraries, templates, owners, and contribution guidelines.
Figma Guild Slack
A community of over 2,000 designers supporting one another in using IBM's Design system and getting the most out of Figma.
Figma Fridays
Weekly presentations that demoed how to work with new libraries/templates while providing a space for hands on collaboration and feedback.
Figma Office Hours
One hour weekly meetings where designers bring real work for feedback and support to ensure it's implementing the best practices.
Better collaboration, higher quality, enhanced productivity
The results of these efforts went far beyond improved processes—they created a measurable and lasting transformation within IBM’s design ecosystem.
Reduction time in project setup and connecting to libraries.
Reduction in maintenance and overhead for design libraries.
Reduction in detached components and custom built components for basic needs
Average number of participants that attended Figma Fridays
Number of times the project template file was duplicated and implemented and utilized by the design community
Number of designers and developers actively following and engaging with the Figma Guild support channel.
Impact beyond the numbers
Improved Collaboration
Unified workflows and shared resources eliminated silos, enabling teams to collaborate seamlessly. Standardized practices and integrated libraries reduced redundancies and aligned outputs across teams.
Higher Quality Designs
Reliable, Storybook-aligned components reduced the need for custom workarounds and detaching components. This consistency improved design quality and ensured adherence to proper specifications.
Adoption and Engagement
Metrics from Figma Fridays, Office Hours, template duplications, and an active Slack channel demonstrated strong engagement. This participation fostered collaboration, feedback, and a culture of continuous improvement.
Why we do what we do
This entire project reflects that with passion and drive, you can make massive change. It all began with three designers—up late at night—wondering why IBM couldn’t have better design assets and processes. That night, we decided to fix it. We stepped out of our comfort zones, took ownership, and put in the work. This initiative didn’t come with extra pay or benefits, but the connections, communities, and quality-of-life improvements it created were worth the months of long nights. Special thanks to Juan Encalada and Eugene To for those late nights and priceless memories.
Empowering a Design Community
This project taught me the importance of fostering collaboration and shared knowledge to build a strong, engaged design community. The Figma Guild created a culture where designers could easily connect, learn, and contribute to shared success.
Leveraging Templates for Scalability
Developing and standardizing reusable templates demonstrated the power of simplicity and scalability in streamlining workflows. I learned how structured assets could reduce inefficiencies while enabling teams to focus on creativity and innovation.
Bridging Design and Development
By aligning the Figma Library with Storybook, I saw firsthand how tools could bridge the gap between design and development, ensuring consistency across processes while empowering cross-functional teams.
Championing Contribution
Encouraging a contribution-first mindset reinforced the importance of collaboration across teams. This approach not only enriched the library with high-quality assets but also built a shared sense of ownership and pride within the design community.
The Power of Communication
Hosting "Figma Fridays" and offering office hours taught me how consistent communication and support can drive tool adoption and build trust. This experience highlighted how education and feedback loops foster long-term success in large organizations.