Architecting a design language from the ground up.
ROLE
Lead UX
TIMEFRAME
2024-2026
TEAM
Product manager, 3 developers, 1 additional UX designer
CONTEXT
David Yurman's digital presence had grown organically over the years and as the first UX hire, I was tasked with building the team and redesigning the site. It was clear there wasn't a system in place ready to move the brand into the next era. The site, email templates, and internal tools had each developed their own visual language in isolation.
Type sizes and styles, buttons, ADA compliance, colors, and spacing conventions varied not just across platforms, but sometimes within the same page. There was no shared vocabulary between design, tech, creative, and outside vendors.
Outcome & Metrics
Site health metrics improved significantly following Design System implementation:
-38%
Bounce Rate Reduction
+55%
Time On Site Increase
+9%
Page View Increase
80
ADA compliance score, the highest number the site has ever seen
THE PROBLEM
Every new project started from a different baseline and each team used a different template. Every vendor and internal team made slightly different interpretations of the brand, and ADA compliance was not only getting flagged, but it was also inconsistent. The lack of a shared foundation meant each launch carried more risk and more rework. Most importantly, it created inconsistency and a lack of trust with the customer when it's crucial in shopping for luxury items online the experience should feel rich, secure, and reliable.
There was no single owner of this problem, and no formal mandate to fix it. The system didn't exist because no one had made the case, so I made one.
MY ROLE & CONSTRAINTS
I sold the initiative to leadership as a key 2025 priority. It was approved, and I led the Design System from 0-1, making foundational design decisions, and driving alignment across Business, Tech, Creative, and Development teams.
The constraints were significant. We were designing a system for a live site that couldn't be taken offline. Every decision had to account for a phased rollout that didn't break existing experiences. We also had to thread the needle between brand fidelity, ADA compliance, and technical feasibility, leaving the selection of final brand elements layered with complexity. We had to select elements that would scale in a breadth of places across the site, which became the core of the work.
KEY DECISION 1
The Audit
Before a single component was drawn, I mapped the full landscape of existing styles across every digital touchpoint: site, email, and all vendor-produced assets. I worked with the Development team to get lists of inconsistencies in font, color, iconography, and beyond, choosing what elements were key to the foundation of the Design System. This gave us a baseline and revealed the true scope of inconsistency.
This audit also made it incredibly clear we needed to update the cohesion of the site and needed to keep leadership aligned on why this work mattered and why it couldn't be done halfway.
KEY DECISION 2
Designing for flexibility, not just consistency
The risk in building a design system for a brand focused on growth is that it can become a constraint rather than an enabler. I made the deliberate decision to build components that could flex, accommodating new product categories, new surface areas, and new campaign needs, without requiring the system to be rebuilt. This meant more upfront thinking about states, variants, and edge cases, but it protected the investment long-term.
KEY DECISION 3
ADA compliance as a design standard, not an afterthought
Rather than treating accessibility as a QA checklist, I worked with Creative early to establish ADA-compliant foundation for all core elements: color, type, buttons, icons and grids, as part of the system's core spec.
This required some difficult conversations about brand color applications that didn't meet contrast requirements. In luxury we balance the lightness and sophistication of building a luxury experience, but still creating a site that is compliant and flexible across screensizes. Framing it as brand protection, not design restriction, made alignment possible.
KEY DECISION 4
Phased implementation to protect the live site
Rather than a hard cutover, I designed a rollout strategy that introduced system components progressively alongside existing site work. This reduced risk for Tech and gave the team real-world feedback on components before they became the standard, keeping the site stable throughout. The tradeoff was a longer transition period, around one year total, but it was the right call for a live ecommerce environment where we didn't want to risk conversion.
THE OUTCOME
The Design System launched in 2026 after a year of designing and developing the assets. It was then deemed the foundational infrastructure for all digital design work going forward across our CMO organization.
It was adopted across the site, email, and outside vendor projects like our Clienteling tool, and served as the compliance and consistency baseline. We created onboarding documentation, workflows for component updates, and a Vendor-specific version that used select pages and key information needed to communicate brand needs.
REFLECTIONS
Building the first-ever design system was as much an organizational challenge as a design one.
The work I'm proudest of was the sheer breadth of the project coming to fruition, handled by our UX team of two, and the business case we built to that got the initiative approved. Seeing the cross-functional alignment come together, keeping five different teams moving toward the same standard was a huge win for the brand and for all teams.
We learned quickly after launch the importance of keeping the Design System up to date.
As we continued to launch new initiatives and iterations to the site, our UX team became the keepers of the system. A lightweight but formal versioning process was created so that when components evolve, every team working within the system knows what changed, why, and what it means for their work.
