PACELift: Cleaning Up Design & Development Debt

The Problem

Vanguard released a new design system called "Constellation" (C11n) — with a brand mandate to adopt the new system — but none of the products our team supported were compliant. Our org was bleeding money — over $2m annually — and accruing copious amounts of design and development debt by designing all our feature work from scratch instead of using our design system.

I spearheaded the initiative to migrate all the products our org supports to Constellation (6 robust products and over 3,000 screens to redesign) in order to decrease our time to delivery and rectify our design and dev debt.

My Role & Objectives

As the Product Design Manager, and the originator of the project, my role was to:

• Navigate relationships with business leadership to secure funding for the project
• Identify design system talent and assemble the best team for the project
• Help set strategy and goals as well as ensuring alignment between the PACELift team and our business and dev partners
• Help define scope and advise on gray areas
• Represent the team in strategic conversations with our business and dev partners to support the work — from design to development
• Present updates and provide air cover: communicating business wins from the project to senior leadership teams and helping the team manage scope creep
• Check in regularly to support the team and keep them on track

Learnings

Background

Upon joining Vanguard as a Product Design Manager, I inherited a challenge: Vanguard's brand team had introduced Constellation, Vanguard's new design system, and mandated its use across all projects. Prior to my joining, the team was emulating Constellation's "look and feel" through custom designs rather than implementing its standardized components.

This approach resulted in significant design and development debt, highlighting the need for a more sustainable approach to design system integration.

The Business Case

I made the business case to switch our products to Constellation by analyzing meeting times spent on custom design work and consulting with developers experienced with Constellation. I identified our developers were spending up to 3x as long building our products from scratch. And meetings between designers and developers haggling through custom design work was costing roughly ~$4,200 per designer per week.

Building the Team

I recruited individuals with exceptional visual design talent, a deep understanding of our products and existing design systems, and the ability to establish scalable processes. I prioritized:

• Stamina to handle the extensive Figma workload
• Breaking down silos between departments

This initiative not only supported the migration to Constellation but also served as a prototype for a cross-functional design team, fostering collaboration and innovation across the organization.

Managing the Project

I helped the team set clear goals and devise a comprehensive strategy to cover all our products. I regularly engaged with senior leadership teams and presented wins and updates, ensuring alignment with organizational objectives. I acted as a tiebreaker, ensuring decisions aligned with our overall strategy and providing air cover for the team. Additionally, I adeptly negotiated with business leaders when deadlines shifted and scope creep threatened our progress.

UX Improvements

Beyond a like-for-like component swap, the migration was also an opportunity to elevate the underlying user experience across our B2B products.

Outcomes