CASE STUDY

Harmony

Design System

Unifying Two Legacy Systems Into One Source of Truth

13+

teams aligned

30+

products supported

65+

components audited

100%

WCAG ACCessibile

100%

Brand Compliant
01 - Overview

Harmony at a glance

As Senior Product Systems Designer for Change Healthcare’s UICL design system, I led the evolution of the design foundations powering Optum Insight’s B2B SaaS products. Midway through this work, another legacy system—UITK—lost funding but continued supporting multiple live products. Ownership of UITK was transferred to our team.

Suddenly, product designers and engineers were navigating two competing design systems. Experiences drifted apart, delivery slowed, and teams weren’t sure which system to trust. Harmony became our answer: a unified, modernized design system built to restore clarity, consistency, and confidence across the product ecosystem.

Two competing legacy libraries merged into a single, coherent design system with shared foundations.

Semantic tokens spanning color, type, spacing, and motion — consumable by both design and engineering.

Every component audited against WCAG 2.1 AA with clear documentation for accessible usage patterns.

Step-by-step deprecation plan allowing teams to migrate at their own pace without breaking changes.

Reduced decision fatigue across 12+ teams with shared patterns that ship reliably and look cohesive.

ROLE

Senior Product Systems Designer, leading strategy, cross‑system audits, accessibility alignment, component design, token architecture, and designer adoption.

TEAM

6 engineers, supporting UX product designer, A11y expert, QA expert, project manager

TOOLS

Figma, Figma AI Agent, Tokens Studio, Zeroheight, Github, Airtable, Rally, Copilot

02 - THE CHALLENGE

Why Harmony was necessary

Maintaining two parallel design systems was unsustainable and created friction across the organization.

layers_clear

Brand alignment and accessibility compliance became increasingly difficult to guarantee.

psychology_alt

Products built on UICL and UITK looked and behaved differently, confusing users and eroding trust in the brand.

hourglass_top

Designers and engineers spent time reconciling differences instead of shipping.

foundation

Both systems had strengths, but neither was complete enough to serve as the long‑term foundation.