Design systems, three times
Three systems, three organizations. Each one corrected something the previous attempt got wrong, which is easier to see laid end to end than inside any one of them. Fulcrum unified the design team and stopped at engineering's edge. Uplift got further only because the real fix was organizational — its engineers reported into Development, and moving them under UX had to come before any component work did. Harmony is the first one designed for a reader that isn't human. The arc is the argument.
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The first attempt, and the one that stopped at the design team’s edge — a unified Figma library and a documentation site that engineering never picked up. What that gap cost is the argument the next two systems were built to answer.
BetterCloudHow a shared design language cut prototype time by 40% — and what it revealed about cross-functional adoption.
How I led the design of Fulcrum, BetterCloud’s internal design system — unifying a fragmented SaaSOps product suite and learning firsthand what it takes to carry a design system across the boundary from design into engineering.
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The second attempt, where the fix turned out to be organizational: the system was failing because its engineers reported into Development, so moving them under UX came before any component work did.
TVH Parts Co.How moving design system engineers under UX ownership — and co-designing governance with an engineering advocate — turned a neglected component library into shared infrastructure across four brand tech teams.
At TVH, a design system existed in name only — engineers had stopped trusting it and were building their own components. Moving DS engineers under UX and co-designing governance with an engineering advocate stabilized the system and expanded it to four brand tech teams and 15 front-end developers, with a token architecture that would underpin the company’s planned international brand consolidation.
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The third attempt, and the first one built for a non-human reader: tokens as a contract an AI coding agent consumes directly, not documentation someone has to translate first.
Harmony Design System — Arcos, IncWhat happens to a design system when AI agents are first-class consumers — and how building two prior systems shaped the architecture that finally closes the gap.
What design systems become when AI is a first-class consumer — and what three companies of building them taught me about the architecture that closes the gap between human-readable and machine-executable.