Marketing Design System
As SurveyMonkey’s marketing web ecosystem expanded across the homepage, product microsites, landing pages, and SEM and SEO pages, teams kept solving the same problems. I helped build more than 40 components, templates, and a shared system of documentation, training, and QA. End-to-end production time across engineering, design, and web fell by about 50%.
- Role
- Lead Visual UX Designer · MDS Design Lead
- System
- 40+ reusable components
- Operations
- Documentation · training · reviews · QA
- Outcome
- Approx. 50% reduction in end-to-end production time
- Scope
- Homepage · Microsite · Landing · SEM · SEO
- Update reach
- Hundreds of global pages from one update
- Quality
- Accessibility · localization · responsive behavior
- Collaboration
- Brand · Design · Web · Engineering · Product
I reframed page-by-page production as a shared-standards problem
SurveyMonkey’s marketing web ecosystem included the homepage, product microsites, landing pages, and SEM and SEO pages. As that ecosystem grew, teams rebuilt the same assets and layouts, while quality and implementation speed varied by market and owner.
I saw the bottleneck as a lack of shared standards, not individual working speed. We needed a system that kept the brand consistent while remaining adaptable to each market and content need.
I reduced production time without giving up flexibility
I broke existing marketing assets into elements and components, then designed variants that remained stable across different content lengths and screen sizes. Accessibility, localization, and responsive behavior were requirements from the start, not checks left for final QA.
I then made editable components and templates available directly in the design workflow. One global update could propagate across hundreds of pages, while end-to-end production time across engineering, design, and web fell by about 50%.
- Reusable, customizable, and extensible components
- 40+
- Reduction in end-to-end production time
- Approx. 50%
- Potential reach of one global update
- 1 → hundreds
I made the MDS Library a shared source of truth
I brought brand guidelines, building blocks, components, and resources into one central hub shared by design, web, and engineering. Teams could use the same reference to decide what to reuse and what genuinely needed to be created for a new page.
The library was not a storage folder. It was the operating surface that connected the system to production. Popular Components, Styles, and Resources made the right standard easier to find.
Peer feedback showed how the system worked in practice
Adoption required more than publishing components. I connected Jira requirements, Zeplin mockups, training and workshops, reviews, and QA in one operating flow.
In peer feedback collected twice a year, people repeatedly mentioned the way we worked together, not just the output. I have removed names and photographs and summarized only the role they saw me play.
- Content engineering manager: reused components across many page types and improved controls for different content lengths and breakpoints.
- Web project manager: connected decision evidence and collaboration across web, engineering, brand, and product.
- Growth product manager: described me as a partner who understood both the user perspective and efficient CMS operations.
A good design system was not a collection of components. It was a way for different teams to make and execute decisions from the same standards.
How this work shaped the way I lead today
The biggest lesson from MDS was that good components alone do not keep a system running. The habits of clarifying roles, documenting decisions, and reviewing work together stayed with me in later research, project operations, and performance reviews.
I started by helping teams build consistent interfaces. Later, I applied the same systems thinking to help them make better decisions.