Unveiling the Complexity of Enterprise Design Systems

At Southleft, we’ve collaborated with some of the most influential organizations across industries to create, refine, and scale design systems that power digital experiences at an enterprise level. While we can’t name these organizations (mainly due to NDAs), we can share insights into the types of challenges we’ve solved and the innovative approaches we’ve taken to transform their front-end ecosystems.

Bringing Structure to Design Systems

Large-scale digital experiences demand cohesion, flexibility, and performance. Our work has consistently tackled challenges such as:

• Unifying fragmented design components across multiple teams and frameworks.
• Modernizing legacy design systems while ensuring a smooth transition for developers.
• Creating scalable component libraries that seamlessly integrate with various front-end technologies.
• Ensuring accessibility compliance to meet WCAG 2.1 AA standards.
• Providing governance and documentation to ensure long-term adoption.

To bring these solutions to life, we’ve worked on projects across a diverse range of industries, each presenting unique technical and creative challenges.

Project Spotlights

Transforming a Financial Exchange’s Design System

We partnered with a global financial exchange to modernize their design system, ensuring it could support the fast-paced, high-traffic nature of financial markets. Our work included:

• Developing a scalable Web Component-based UI library, allowing for seamless integration across various internal and external trading applications.
• Enhancing API design to make the component library more flexible and developer-friendly.
• Ensuring multi-framework compatibility, allowing React, Angular, and other technologies to consume components with minimal friction.
• Implementing comprehensive documentation and governance processes to streamline future adoption and scalability.

Through this modernization, the financial exchange improved its developer efficiency, UI consistency, and overall scalability, helping teams work faster while maintaining an intuitive and visually cohesive experience. We worked with a financial technology leader to overhaul their design system, transitioning from a scattered collection of React and Angular components to a centralized Web Component-based library. This shift enabled cross-platform adoption, improved performance, and reduced maintenance overhead. We also implemented design tokens to ensure branding consistency across multiple applications and provided governance documentation to streamline developer onboarding.

Transforming the Digital Presence of a Global Retail Brand

A major retailer approached us to rebuild their UI framework and migrate legacy components to a new design system. We established a React-based component library, integrated it with their design tokens, and provided extensive Storybook documentation to support their distributed development teams. Additionally, we introduced an improved CI/CD workflow, making it easier for developers to deploy updates and maintain component consistency across their e-commerce platform.

Building a Scalable UI Framework for a Healthcare Leader

We collaborated with a leading healthcare and insurance provider to develop a scalable Web Component library that unified UI patterns across a vast digital ecosystem. This project involved:

• Creating a robust, reusable component system that ensured consistency across their customer and provider-facing applications.
• Aligning components with Figma designs, improving design-to-development efficiency.
• Ensuring full WCAG 2.1 AA compliance, allowing for an inclusive user experience.
• Integrating the system into an existing UI component library, making adoption seamless across multiple teams and platforms.

By implementing a scalable, accessible design system, we helped this healthcare leader create a more efficient, inclusive, and maintainable front-end ecosystem, improving both internal developer workflows and customer experiences. We partnered with a healthcare organization to audit and enhance their existing design system, ensuring full WCAG compliance. Our team conducted extensive accessibility testing, implemented scalable UI components, and improved their documentation for long-term sustainability. We also collaborated with their internal teams to create a structured accessibility training program to ensure ongoing compliance as their system evolved.

Scaling a Design System for an Education Initiative

A national education-focused nonprofit engaged us to build and scale a React-based design system that could support multiple applications under one unified UI framework. We collaborated closely with their team to ensure a seamless developer experience and flexible theming options. By implementing a multi-brand design token architecture, we provided the flexibility needed for different educational tools to maintain a consistent but adaptable UI structure.

Modernizing a Design System for an Industrial Leader

We partnered with a global industrial equipment manufacturer to modernize their design system, ensuring consistency across a vast digital ecosystem spanning multiple applications and internal tools. This initiative included:

• Developing a robust Web Component library to unify UI patterns across product platforms.
• Standardizing design tokens to maintain visual consistency across interfaces.
• Implementing a structured governance model to ensure long-term adoption and scalability.
• Enhancing documentation and developer resources through Storybook integration, making it easier for engineering teams to implement components correctly.

By modernizing their design system, we helped this organization streamline their front-end development, improve cross-team collaboration, and reduce inconsistencies in their digital experiences. We worked on a large-scale design system initiative for a financial exchange, delivering a comprehensive Web Component library that replaced an outdated React system. The result was a more resilient, scalable, and performance-driven UI architecture that supported high-traffic financial applications. To further optimize performance, we implemented tree-shakable components, ensuring that only necessary UI elements were loaded dynamically for each user session.

Building a Highly Modular Design System for a Networking Technology Firm

Working alongside a partner agency, we developed a comprehensive Web Component-based design system for a leading networking technology company. This initiative focused on:

• Creating a scalable, reusable UI framework that integrates seamlessly with their internal applications.
• Establishing a DevOps-driven workflow to ensure smooth component integration across engineering teams.
• Delivering complex data visualization components tailored for their industry-specific use cases.
• Mapping a structured design token library to maintain visual consistency across applications.

By implementing a tiered component structure, we enabled their developers to rapidly deploy UI components while maintaining flexibility for future expansion. Our work also included Storybook documentation and automated testing pipelines, ensuring long-term maintainability and ease of adoption.

At Southleft, we take immense pride in the work we do—helping companies bring order to the complexity of enterprise front-end systems. These projects aren’t just about building reusable components; they’re about accelerating development cycles, improving team collaboration, and delivering tangible ROI for our clients. Many of the organizations we work with see measurable improvements within the first year, from faster onboarding times to reduced technical debt and more efficient design-to-development workflows.

We believe that great design systems don’t just support teams—they empower them. By pulling us in to help evaluate, build, and refine your design system, you’re investing in a framework that ensures consistency, scalability, and long-term success.

Looking to build or scale your design system? Let’s talk.