Building a Design System to Power Sales Overview and Beyond
Created a scalable design system for First Trust’s Sales Overview platform, ensuring consistency, reusability, and faster product delivery.
50% Faster Component Delivery
Consistent UI Across Teams
Reusable System for Future Tools
The Challenge
Sales Overview relied on inconsistent UI patterns, duplicated components, and developer workarounds that slowed releases. Teams lacked a centralized system, leading to inefficiencies and fragmented experiences.
Our Approach
Discovery. Audited existing UI components and mapped inconsistencies across the Sales Overview platform.
System Architecture. Defined tokens, components, and patterns that balanced flexibility with strict standards.
Validation. Collaborated with engineers and product specialists to test scalability and ease of implementation.
Impact
Reduced design and development effort by 50% through reusable components.
Improved platform-wide UI consistency and accessibility.
Established a foundation that could extend to other First Trust internal tools.
Looking Ahead
Roadmap themes: Expand the design system into Bespoke and other enterprise tools.
Future experiments: Introduce accessibility-first and responsive component variations.
Opportunities: Position the system as the baseline for future advisor-facing platforms.
Team
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Project Role
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Project Role
Drew Baker
Senior Product Designer
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Product Manager
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Product Manager
Project Details
Role: Senior Product Designer
Company: First Trust Portfolios
Timeframe: 2022-2024
Surface: Web App (Internal)
Team: PM, Engineer, Data, Designer
Focus: Design System, UI Consistency, Developer Collaboration
Tools: Figma, Tailwind CSS, Preline Pro
See the full case study.
Detailed tokens, component decisions, and implementation workflows.
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