Consultation
Work

Design systems with Big Medium

Client
Big Medium and its clients
Role
Design systems consultant, then AI lead
Period
2021 – 2024
Worked with
Brad Frost, Josh Clark and the Big Medium team

Every big company's design system hits the same walls. Finding them is half the job.

At Big Medium I worked alongside Brad Frost and Josh Clark, helping some of America's largest companies understand what was holding their design systems back, then helping their teams finish building them. Later, as AI lead, I helped teams bring AI into that work.

1 · listen to the teams?!…?!?interviews at five huge companies2 · find the patternspeopleprocesstoolsthe same walls, everywhere3 · build it togetherdesign system+ AIbuilt with the team!1 · listen to the teams?!…?!?interviews at five huge companies2 · find the patternspeopleprocesstoolsthe same walls, everywhere3 · build it togetherdesign system+ AIbuilt with the team!
Listen to the people who use the system, find the problems every big company shares, then build the fix alongside the team.

It started with listening

Before we built anything, Brad Frost and I interviewed the people who actually lived with each design system: designers, engineers and product teams. The interviews were private and candid, which is the only way to hear how a system really works rather than how it's supposed to.

We spoke to teams at five very large organisations:

  • one of America's biggest health insurers;
  • the stock exchange that gave its name to a market index;
  • the company behind the world's best-known yellow construction machines;
  • one of America's biggest payroll and HR providers;
  • and a retirement and insurance group with its name on a ballpark.

Different industries, different tools, very different cultures, and yet the same kinds of problems came up again and again.

From diagnosis to delivery

Interviews were the start, not the product. They led to hands-on engagements where we worked with each organisation's own team to finish building their design system, fixing the problems we'd heard about.

Working inside so many very large companies gave me a rare view of what separates a design system that teams rely on from one they quietly work around. That's the experience I bring to every design systems project now.

Bringing AI into design systems

I joined Big Medium as a design systems consultant, before generative AI arrived. As it did, I became Big Medium's AI lead, helping teams use AI to accelerate their design systems work, inform their decisions, and take on the repetitive parts that slow a system down.

I built internal tools for Big Medium and for clients along the way. One client project, for the stock exchange, helped move along an early version of the product that later became Spektral.

What this means for your organisation

If your design system isn't being used the way you hoped, the cause is rarely the components. I can help you find out what's really holding it back by listening to the people who use it, then help your team fix it, using AI where it genuinely speeds things up. Get in touch.