Creating the design system, product architecture, and UX strategy to bring six enterprise products into one connected Propio ecosystem.
The Challenge
Propio’s products had grown independently over time. Each product had its own UI patterns, components, navigation, and approach to users and access. Similar experiences were designed and built differently across products, and sometimes within the same product.
As major redesigns began, the work revealed a bigger platform problem: improving individual products would not be enough. Propio needed a shared foundation that could make each product feel connected without forcing every workflow into the same mold.
Scaling the System
The first design system solved the immediate web product need, but I knew it would eventually need to support a broader ecosystem. Tokens were embedded inside the web library, which worked until the system needed to expand into mobile.
As the design team grew, we separated primitive and semantic tokens into a shared foundation, moved assets into their own library, and allowed web and mobile libraries to use the same underlying design language.
V1
V2
Foundation First
Decision 01
The design strategy was to solve the foundation first, then let product screens inherit the same patterns. I built the web design system alongside active product work, reducing design and engineering debt while teams continued shipping.
Decision 02
Part of the MegaApp strategy was standardizing access. Instead of asking users to remember a different URL for every product, I designed a single login experience with SSO and a shared product App Switcher. After signing in, users could eventually navigate to the different apps they had access to from one consistent place.
Foundational components
Faster engineering delivery
Products moving toward one experience
Systems built from shared tokens
The fragmentation went beyond two applications
The need for a shared system became clearer when looking across the wider product ecosystem. Each application had evolved independently, with its own navigation, components, and interaction patterns. To create a connected experience, we needed to move beyond one-off redesigns and establish a system that could scale across the entire platform.
A different navigation structure, component library, and information hierarchy created its own distinct product experience.
A legacy, data-heavy interface relied on dense workflows and patterns unique to scheduling.
An outdated visual language and navigation model introduced yet another set of patterns across the platform.
Proof Through Products
Translation Portal and Interpreter Portal became the clearest proof points for the platform direction. Each product served a different workflow, but the redesigns showed they could share navigation, components, interaction patterns, and visual language without losing what made each product specific.
Before / after
The legacy Translation Portal relied on dense tables, inconsistent controls, and product-specific navigation. The redesign introduced shared navigation, reusable components, and interaction patterns that simplified complex translation workflows and helped establish the foundation for the unified platform.
Before / after
The legacy Interpreter Portal had its own navigation, visual language, and page structure. The redesign brought it into the shared product system with consistent navigation and components, while preserving the workflows, status, and performance information unique to interpreters.
Beyond Consistency
Making products look consistent was not enough. A unified platform needed a shared way to think about organizations, users, product access, roles, and permissions. Without that model, each product would continue to define users differently.
01
A user should not need to exist independently within every product.
02
First determine which products a user can access, then what they can do.
03
Responsibilities in Translation may be different from Scheduling or Analytics.
The Path Forward
Bringing six applications into one ecosystem at once was not realistic. I created a two-phase strategy that let teams keep shipping while moving toward the same platform direction.
Today
Phase 1
Phase 2
Future State
The platform should own shared services like organizations, users, roles, authentication, notifications, search, settings, help, and app switching. Products should keep the specialized workflows and business logic that make them valuable.
Leadership Outcome
I started this transformation as Propio’s first product designer. Today, the platform direction is scaling through the design team. I lead two product designers who are redesigning WFOS and the mobile Interpreter app while extending the web and mobile design libraries.
I continue to supervise the work, helping ensure each experience reuses shared patterns, stays aligned to the broader UX vision, and still makes room for the nuances of each product’s users, workflows, and goals.
Started with
Scaled to
Where We Are Today
Major product redesigns in implementation.
Products aligned to one platform direction.
Helping scale the system and product vision.
Reflection
What started as a design system initiative became a broader transformation of how Propio approaches its product ecosystem. I did not set out to make six products simply look more consistent. I created the foundation for them to eventually work as one platform. That shared foundation reduced duplicated design decisions across product teams and helped accelerate redesign work across web and mobile.
I’m happy to walk through the strategy, system architecture, and product decisions behind the work.
Contact me