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ShopBack Design System: from 38% to 85% adoption

Drove ShopBack's design system adoption from under 40% to over 80% of features in 2023 and 2024.

2022 – 2025

Role
Senior product designer and design system lead
Team
2 product designers, with mobile platform engineers on iOS and Android
Stack
  • Figma
  • Claude
  • Confluence
Outcome
Features fully on SBDS rose from 38% in 2023 to 85% in 2024

Adoption of the ShopBack Design System (SBDS) started as a side project. Feature teams pushed back on the extra effort. I led two designers to change that. Engineering leads were sceptical, so I made the case with an ROI model and a pilot.

Before tokens, the button colour lived in 468 places. Now it is one token, so the rebrand to black was one value.
Before tokens, the button colour lived in 468 places. Now it is one token, so the rebrand to black was one value.

In Q3 2023 adoption became a team-level objective with an 80% target, and a dashboard tracked it feature by feature. Then I set up governance so teams kept using it: contribution guidelines, reviews and office hours every two weeks.

Features fully on SBDS went from 38% in 2023 to 85% in 2024, past the 80% target.
Features fully on SBDS went from 38% in 2023 to 85% in 2024, past the 80% target.

The year-by-year story is in State of ShopBack Design Systems.

Four years of SBDS, from pitching to AI readiness.
Four years of SBDS, from pitching to AI readiness.

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