Displayr Design System

Displayr is an advanced, AI-focused data insights and dashboard platform used by leading market research agencies worldwide. Following a UI redesign in 2022 with no design system established from the outset, I was brought on in 2026 to build one from scratch. That meant auditing what already existed, identifying the visual values buried within years of inconsistent decisions, and turning them into a set of rules the whole company could actually use.

Working as a solo designer on a three-month internship, scope management was everything. Tokens, while foundational to any mature design system, simply weren't going to be possible within the timeline. Establishing a token structure and component values simultaneously wasn't realistic. So v0 focused on the core components: [list them here]. Each component went through a review loop with my manager to catch any edge cases I might have missed, and once signed off, we started directing people toward the system. Engineers building a new feature would come to us, we'd talk through their needs, and then point them to the design system doc for anything further. The idea was simple: build the habit gradually, then expand the system alongside it.

The system shipped with roughly 25 components. The 7 key components had fully completed documentation, with the remainder carrying definition, purpose, guidelines, anatomy, and values. The impact showed up quickly in the places it mattered. Spacing went from an incoherent spread of values (1px, 3px, 5px, 13px, 15px) to a clean scale of 0, 2, 4, 8, 12, and 16px. Icon sizing followed the same logic, moving from an illogical 16, 20, 25, and 32px to a proper 16, 20, 24, and 32px. Engineers started using it to guide UI decisions, and if a component was going to be used in a one-off way that didn't fit the system, the answer became: change the approach, not the system.

Looking back, I overscoped it. I went in wanting to ship something comprehensive and that ambition quickly became a liability. The most important thing this project taught me was knowing when and where to cut. Understanding what's absolutely necessary versus what can be pushed. Recognising that in a small business, good enough and shipped often serves the company better than perfect and never finished. And as a junior designer in a company that's 95% engineers, learning to advocate for what genuinely matters from a design perspective was its own skill entirely.