Sebastian Mendo | Senior Product Designer

Standardizing Design Systems for
Accelerating Enterprise Feature Production

Standardizing Design Systems for Accelerating Enterprise Feature Production

Timeline

2020-2021

My role

Product Designer (Contract)

Teams

Design, Product

Summary (TL;DR)

Through a strategic redesign and update to their design system, Chorus AI was able to ship faster, more effectively, and meet requirements set by their eventual acquisition by ZoomInfo.

As a Product Design contractor, I contributed to the strategic roadmap for Chorus AI by designing, standardizing and shipping its design system, accelerating forwards feature production.

Problem

A fragmented UI resulted in slowing development cycles, resulting in a disjointed feature implementation timeline.

Problem

A fragmented UI resulted in slowing development cycles, resulting in a disjointed feature implementation timeline.

Problem

A fragmented UI resulted in slowing development cycles, resulting in a disjointed feature implementation timeline.

Solution

By leading the standardization effort of their design systems, Chorus AI engineers were able to me more effective at launching new features.

Solution

By leading the standardization effort of their design systems, Chorus AI engineers were able to me more effective at launching new features.

Solution

By leading the standardization effort of their design systems, Chorus AI engineers were able to me more effective at launching new features.

Outcomes

We achieved a faster and more consistent delivery that supported its eventual $575M acquisition.

Outcomes

We achieved a faster and more consistent delivery that supported its eventual $575M acquisition.

Outcomes

We achieved a faster and more consistent delivery that supported its eventual $575M acquisition.

PROBLEM SPACE

Despite maintaining strong user growth and enterprise usage, Chorus AI suffered from a fragmented design system preventing future scaling

Developers rebuilt UI patterns from scratch for nearly every feature.

PMs struggled with unclear specs and last-minute design changes.
Designers kept redrawing the same layouts, introducing inconsistencies.
CRM plugins looked like entirely separate products.

This directly impacted our speed-to-market and eroded customer trust in our product quality.

EXPLORATIONS

Based on feedback we received from Engineers and PMs, it was clear that this was a crucial issue

Interviews: Engineers and PMs reported ~2–3 weeks of extra work per feature just to rebuild UI.

Audit: We found 15+ modal styles, 4 different button systems, and over a dozen recurring handoff errors each month.
Competitive Research: Our main competitor (Gong) had a more polished, cohesive UI that sales teams cited as “more enterprise-ready.”

These insights made it impossible to ignore: we needed to fix this to scale.

Our planning sessions yielded the following objectives

1) Speed up development by standardizing reusable components.

2) Ensure a consistent, high-quality experience across web and CRM plugins.

3) Build a scalable design foundation to support upcoming enterprise integrations.

MY ROLE

As a Product Design contractor, I was responsible for delivering on the features for this new design system, consolidating components, and assisting with handoffs.

Some of my tasks and deliverables were:

Setting the vision and scope.
Building buy-in with PMs, engineers, and leadership.
Designing, documenting, and implementing this system.
Standardizing repeatable patterns.
Driving adoption across teams.

We followed the Atomic Design Methodology to implement these systems

Approach & Process

In order to deliver on these objectives, we followed the following steps

Audit & Research

Catalogued every production UI pattern.
Ran developer and PM interviews to surface pain points.
Identified critical gaps with the current system and its documentation

Catalogued every production UI pattern.
Ran developer and PM interviews to surface pain points.
Identified critical gaps with the current system and its documentation

Prioritization & Scope

Partnered with PMs to define must-have vs. nice-to-have components.
Prioritized high-impact areas like navigation, forms, modals, and CRM plugin consistency.
Balanced engineering constraints and roadmap needs to avoid blocking feature work.

Partnered with PMs to define must-have vs. nice-to-have components.
Prioritized high-impact areas like navigation, forms, modals, and CRM plugin consistency.
Balanced engineering constraints and roadmap needs to avoid blocking feature work.