Scaled Careflow’s design system to fix fragmented patterns across our healthcare platform. This aligned our product teams, sped up dev workflows, and established long-term UI standards.
My Role
Audit, components, guidelines
TEAM
PLATFORM
TIMELINE
Growth outpaced our design guidelines.
Careflow is a software platform created for healthcare professionals to manage daily clinical workflows and patient data. My responsibility was to ensure our digital experiences were cohesive, intuitive, and efficient.
When the product began expanding rapidly to support new medical workflows, our interface started to fracture under the pressure of quick releases. I co-led the effort with the other designer on the team: we audited our design debt, rebuilt the core library with 10+ WCAG 2.1 AA components, and wrote shared usage guidelines, with the product lead reviewing direction.
Rapid expansion created design debt
As new clinical workflows shipped on tight timelines, teams built one-off components instead of extending what existed. The library filled with near-duplicates that looked alike but behaved differently, and every new feature added more to maintain.
Constant layout changes created friction
New features often arrived with their own page layouts. Clinicians had to re-learn where information lived from screen to screen, and engineers rebuilt similar layouts from scratch each time.
The patterns we uncovered
Auditing our existing screens and components showed these weren’t isolated issues. They came from three recurring patterns:
Component bloat and duplication
Existing pieces couldn't handle new product requirements, leading to teams constantly replacing elements and creating conflicting versions of the same UI.
Guesswork instead of guidance
There was no shared logic or documentation detailing when to use specific elements, forcing designers to improvise on every new feature.
Page-by-page fixes instead of a systemic solution
We were treating every screen like an isolated project rather than looking at how they connected, acting as a temporary band-aid instead of a scalable fix.
Setting a new direction for the platform
To fix these systemic issues, we shifted our approach from tweaking individual screens to building a unified, scalable framework based on three core pillars:
We overhauled our design platform by auditing the existing system, deprecating legacy duplicates, and shipping modular components that could stretch to new workflows.
Eliminating guesswork
To streamline design-to-development handoffs, we established guidelines for spacing, sizing, and situational usage, so layouts were no longer guesswork.
Designing for the future
By prioritizing long-term maintainability, this overhaul reduced design debt and made future global updates easier for engineering to roll out.
The outcome
Fewer layout variations and component debt
We cleaned up dozens of messy layouts and redundant components, bringing the platform down to just three core page structures built from a single, trusted library.
An easier experience for users
Standardizing the elements and page hierarchy made the platform much more predictable and intuitive for clinicians to use.
Adopted by engineering
By the time I left, the frontend team was turning the system into a coded UI kit they could use and maintain themselves.