HR · Design Systems

Tesco

Designing a people management system for 367,000+ employees and building a design system from zero.

Role Solo Designer
Domain HR / People Management
Platform Web
Period 2021–2023

The Problem

Developers received non-buildable designs. The screens looked visually correct but were technically non-viable — leading to a cycle of rework that slowed down the entire team.

The root cause was a gap between design and engineering. There was no design system, no shared component library, and no structured handoff process. Each design decision existed in isolation.

What I Did

As the solo designer on the project, I operated in a dual role: designing the interface and fixing the process that produced it. The work included:

  • Design reviews against business requirements
  • Building a Figma design library from scratch
  • Establishing a developer support workflow
  • Accessibility compliance (WCAG)
  • Designing 35+ user flows
  • Heuristic analysis of existing screens

Result

Developers received buildable, business-aligned designs from day one. The design library reduced duplication and gave the team a single source of truth. Handoff quality improved measurably — fewer revision cycles, faster delivery.

This was not a glamorous project. It was infrastructure work: making a large, complex product reliable to build and maintain. That is exactly what a design system is for.

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