Design System for Product

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Case Study

ZS was at significant risk of losing our beachhead with key clients due to the appearance of our solutions; the CTO’s first request when I joined was to make our products more visually consistent. Eager to please in my new role, I quickly learned that the legacy tech stack made a centralized solution impossible.

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Company & Position

ZS Associates, Associate Partner & later Partner (2011-2024)

Details

ZS was competing against companies like Salesforce, Veeva, and Axtria — software companies that had invested polished, cohesive interfaces. Our suite of 40+ products had accumulated years of inconsistent UIs created on different tech stacks. It was affecting the throughput of our UX team – we were not creating new designs quickly or consistently enough. But this wasn’t just an internal issue – it was coming up in satisfaction surveys and renewal conversations as well. We needed a design system — but our legacy technology meant that we had to build one in stages.

Actions

Version 1, 2012 – 2015.
- Audited all solutions for common interface elements. Standardized interaction design patterns and associated code wherever the stack allowed.
- Conducted a competitive analysis (Salesforce, Veeva, others) and presented findings and risk to the Shareholder Council, securing approval to invest.
Version 2, 2015 – 2018.
- A company-wide rebranding initiative created the opening we needed. Extended the effort to include digital asset guidelines.
- Conducted a new competitive assessment (Aktana, Veeva, Axtria, IQVIA).
- Began separating front- and back-end code and established a centralized repository for design standards and front-end component consumption.
Version 3, 2018 – 2020.
- Established a dedicated function within the product group — UX designers, front-end developers, and a fractional product manager — responsible for creating and maintaining standards, governance, and cross-team communication.
- Defined new processes for how full-stack UX, visual designers, and engineers would collaborate.

Outcome & Impact

Three generations of a progressively more sophisticated design system, delivered over ten years.
Client and sales team feedback on solution appearance dropped significantly as disparate products began to look and behave like a cohesive suite.
UX delivery throughput increased; visual consistency across all licensable software established and maintained.
This is also a story about patience — about working with the constraints you have while keeping a longer horizon in view. You can’t always solve the whole problem on day one.