Designing a Scalable Enterprise Design System for Government Financial Platforms

The existing design system had been at a proof-of-concept stage for several years. It was created quickly with a skeleton set of components. It required a lot of custom design and implementation work. The existing design system also did not explicitly support any level of accessiblity.

Overview
I led staff-level design ownership for a multi-product government SaaS platform serving 100+ agencies. My work focused on improving usability, delivery speed, and cross-product consistency through design system leadership and end-to-end workflow design.

Context
Accela’s municipal finance and operations platform supported complex workflows including general ledger, permitting, payroll, and reporting. The ecosystem included multiple legacy systems, inconsistent UX patterns, and distributed product teams.
This created:

  1. High cognitive load for users
  2. Slow delivery cycles
  3. Inconsistent experiences
  4. Increased defect rates

My Role
Staff Product Designer and program-level design lead.
I was responsible for:

  • End-to-end UX ownership across major workflows
  • Design system strategy and governance
  • Prototyping complex financial workflows
  • Influencing product direction with leadership
  • Aligning design, product, and engineering teams

Approach
1. Design System Strategy

  • Defined component architecture and standards
  • Built reusable patterns across products
  • Established governance and contribution model
  • Enabled adoption across multiple teams
2. Workflow & Interaction Design
  • Designed complex financial workflows (GL, AP/AR, payroll)
  • Simplified navigation and task flows
  • Built interactive prototypes for validation
  • Partnered with engineering through implementation
3. Cross-Team Influence
  • Worked with product leadership to prioritize UX improvements
  • Aligned multiple teams on shared patterns
  • Advocated for usability and consistency
  • Introduced reusable solution templates

Impact

  • 120% increase in design system adoption
  • 15% reduction in UX defects per release
  • 19% improvement in usability scores (SUS)
  • Accelerated delivery through reusable patterns
  • Improved cross-product consistency and scalability

Why This Matters
This work required influencing product direction, aligning multiple teams, and owning experience quality across a complex ecosystem — not just producing interface designs.