Case Study · Decisiv · 2018–2025
Starting and growing a design system across 7 years
Built KeyDS from the ground up: 40+ components over 7 years, adopted across the platform. Teams stopped asking for design approval and started asking how to apply patterns.
The Problem
Decisiv is an enterprise SRM platform connecting fleets, service providers, and OEMs to manage commercial vehicle repairs at scale across North America. Over time, its products evolved independently. Teams repeatedly solved the same interface problems in isolation, producing slight variations that accumulated across the platform. What looked like minor inconsistencies became increasingly difficult to maintain and increasingly difficult for users to learn. As the portfolio grew, fragmentation turned into an operational bottleneck, slowing development, increasing cognitive load, and compounding design debt.
Goal
Introduce a design system that accelerated delivery rather than slowing it, creating a shared foundation teams could rely on long term, despite differing priorities, workflows, and legacy constraints.
My Role
I was the senior product designer and primary steward of KeyDS for 7 years, leading the creation and evolution of 40+ components, defining system governance, and maintaining coherence as team composition changed.
Impact at a Glance
Built and stewarded a shared design system across 7 years and 40+ components.
40+
Components built and maintained
7
Years stewarding the system
You did a really fantastic job with the Figma/Component restructure. The ground-work which you've built will really allow the team to streamline our components and how they function.
Phase 1: Incubation Through Real Work
When I joined Decisiv, I was assigned to a new product initiative. Rather than proposing a top-down design system upfront, we treated this product as an incubation space for shared UI patterns. By redesigning core UI elements under real delivery constraints, and pairing closely with developers during implementation, we were able to:
- Validate components in production
- Expose friction early
- Build shared ownership between design and engineering
Engineers reported faster implementation and fewer design ambiguities. What began as a side effort gained internal momentum and was formally added to the organization’s roadmap as KeyDS.
Adoption followed demonstrated value, not mandates.
Phase 2: Designing for Scale
Once KeyDS became an official initiative, the focus shifted from experimentation to durability.
Design systems scale socially before they scale technically
KeyDS needed to be a shared effort, not a centralized design artifact. Design and engineering aligned around a single source of truth by hosting documentation in Storybook, making system usage part of daily development work.
Accessibility was non-negotiable
Accessibility standards were embedded into components from day one, even when this increased initial effort. This prevented costly retrofits and ensured consistent baseline quality across products.
Documentation is a product
Clear usage guidance was treated as essential infrastructure, not an afterthought.
What we built
- Audited existing design assets and defined design principles, typography, color systems, and interaction patterns
- Built a Figma UI Kit with 40+ responsive, accessible components
- Partnered closely with developers to implement a React component library
- Iterated continuously based on feedback from live product usage
Phase 3: Adoption and Maintenance
After launch, the system’s success depended on sustained trust, relevance, and continuity. As team composition changed over time, I ensured KeyDS remained coherent and durable rather than fragmenting with each handoff.
To support long-term adoption, I conducted regular design reviews to maintain quality and consistency, created clear documentation for designers, developers, and tech writers, and continuously evolved the system by introducing new components and guidelines as product needs changed.
KeyDS became the default foundation for new product work, including production applications such as Sentinel, which relied on the system to ship complex workflows consistently at scale.
Impact
KeyDS transformed how Decisiv designs and builds products. Teams shipped features with fewer bespoke UI decisions, spending less time debating patterns and more time solving product problems. Designers and engineers worked from a shared vocabulary and toolset, improving alignment and decision-making. Products felt cohesive across the ecosystem without requiring heavy manual oversight. And by reducing duplication and design debt, the system lowered maintenance costs and improved long-term product health.
Over seven years, KeyDS evolved from an informal set of shared patterns into a durable system that withstood team turnover, shifting priorities, and multiple product cycles. This experience reinforced that design systems succeed as much through process and culture as through components.
Key challenges included integrating KeyDS into older applications, which required pragmatic compromises and additional engineering effort; sustaining ongoing maintenance without clear ownership; and balancing consistency with the need for teams to explore new directions. These tradeoffs required active stewardship over time, not passive enforcement.
If starting again, I would formalize contribution and ownership models earlier. As adoption scaled, governance clarity, not component design, became the primary constraint.
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