Designing for Scale
Building EverDriven's First Comprehensive Design System
Two attempts had already failed. The first was too complex — a maximalist system that scope-creeped into un-usability and got halted by the Engineering VP. The second was too simple — pure MUI, fast to adopt but too generic to serve real product needs.
The third attempt was mine to lead. The solution was a strategic hybrid: MUI as the foundation, with purposeful customization where it genuinely didn’t meet our needs. An estimated 66% reduction in frontend development time. A design-to-development handoff cut from five days to two. A company-wide lunch and learn. A Confluence wiki. A system that actually got used.
Sometimes the best solution is the one that actually gets used. Two years in, we’re still building on it.