Building a unified design system to power a cross-platform ecosystem.
Company
Living Map, UK
Sector
B2B2C SaaS, Geospatial Tech, Design Infrastructure
Year
2020 — 2025
Role
Principal Designer
Expertise
Design Systems System Governance Component Architecture Systems Thinking Cross-functional Leadership
Overview
I led the creation and cultural adoption of the Hippo Design System — named after the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for navigation. Initiated to support a comprehensive re-engineering of our product platform, the system successfully unified a fragmented product suite into a single cohesive ecosystem. Over a multi-year tenure, I continuously managed the governance and evolution of this library as the product portfolio expanded, establishing a shared language that moved the business onto a scalable enterprise SaaS model.
Impact
The introduction of the design system radically accelerated product delivery, eliminating handoff friction and clearing away the structural debt that previously stalled production. It stabilised the core ecosystem and established a single source of truth across all platforms, providing the repeatable infrastructure necessary to roll out complex new products — such as the Map CMS and Asset Locator platform — that were previously impossible to execute at scale.
Beyond its technical contributions, the system catalysed a lasting cultural shift, establishing a shared vocabulary between design and engineering that made structured, collaborative product thinking the default mode of working across the organisation. Ultimately, this work proved that messy technical structures are just as much a design challenge as an engineering one.
