I led the adoption of Etsy’s design system, Collage, to unify the product experience, embed systems into design culture, and lay the foundation for a major redesign and brand refresh.
Collage supports Etsy's two-sided marketplace, serving buyer and seller experiences across web, iOS, Android, and Flutter. Overtime, organic growth lead to fragmented interfaces and visual inconsistencies across the product ecosystem. Adoption varied and expectations around how and when to use the design system were unclear.
I was brought on to lead design systems during a period of significant change. Etsy was preparing for a brand refresh and a native app redesign was on the horizon. My focus was to improve adoption of Collage by strengthening guidance, driving foundational cleanup, and evolving how the design systems team partnered with product and brand teams to create an engagement model to build trust, increase visibility, and offer deeper design system support.
Approach
Before proposing changes or setting direction, I prioritized listening and observing—taking time to understand the landscape, the problem space, and how teams were engaging with design systems at Etsy as I was onboarding into my new role. Meeting people where they were helped shape a strategy for Collage that felt relevant, achievable, and impactful.
Strategic leadership
Set a clear vision for Collage that aligned with company-wide priorities, including a brand refresh and native app redesign.
Defined a multi-quarter roadmap that translated high-level business and design objectives into clear, actionable design system initiatives spanning adoption, education, documentation, and tooling.
Positioned the design system as an enabler of consistency, cohesion, and brand expression across Etsy’s product ecosystem.
Contributed systems-specific competencies to Etsy’s quality craft framework, clarifying expectations for using the design system and designing for patterns, modularity, and consistency across products and features.
Quality craft competency matrix for systems: Defines expectations for how designers at Etsy grow from developing foundational design system skills to driving consistency, modularity, and ecosystem-wide improvements across IC1-IC6.
Build trust and alignment
Evolved the design system team’s engagement model to increase visibility and support by creating regular touchpoints through office hours, critique, design reviews, training, and embedded partnerships.
Led discovery workshops with design leadership, product designers, and brand partners to understand how the system was being used in practice, surface pain points, and identify gaps in education, guidance, and coverage.
Collaborated with product design managers to audit their teams’ surface and system usage, encouraging thoughtful reflection on consistency, quality, and patterns. These conversations helped shift adoption from a centralized effort to a shared responsibility for strengthening design quality across Etsy’s product ecosystem.
Facilitated a design sprint with brand and product design leaders to align on a shared vision for Etsy’s design language. This collaborative kickoff built momentum, clarified early areas for refinement, and fostered buy-in around the system’s role in expressing the brand.
Design language sprint readout: Highlights from cross-functional workshops that surfaced opportunities to refine Etsy's design language and unify the product experience.
Design system adoption
Defined a long-term strategy to increase design system coverage, while focusing short-term efforts on adopting a narrow set of high-impact, token-based foundations – including spacing, typography, and color – to deliver immediate value.
Coordinated with product teams to implement these changes ahead of the holiday code freeze, aligning cleanup with roadmap priorities and securing leadership buy-in to prioritize adoption at scale.
Delivered updated usage guidelines for design foundations to support token adoption, clarifying how design elements should be applied and helping designers use the system as intended.
Launched a custom linting plugin in Figma to support designers in adopting design tokens (variables) and phasing out deprecated legacy styles.
Pre-holiday surface cleanup guidelines: Guidance shared with product teams to adopt design tokens, improve consistency, and focus on high-impact updates ahead of the 2024 holiday code freeze.
Impact
Adoption of tokens
90%
across key product surfaces
Designer satisfaction with Collage
+9
from 65 → 74 in 3 months
This work marked the beginning of a larger transformation. While still in progress, we saw early wins that reflected the groundwork I laid—building momentum for broader adoption, long-term system maturity, and lasting cultural change.
Increased design satisfaction with Collage +9 points from 65 → 74 in 3 months
90% adoption of token-based foundations across key surfaces ahead of the 2024 holiday code freeze
Systems added to Etsy's quality craft framework and used in performance reviews
Positioned Collage to support a phased rollout of Etsy's refreshed brand identity across all platforms
Cross-functional roadmap for Collage: Timeline of design system adoption and brand refresh milestones, including cleanup, tooling, and rollout coordination.
Note: This case study reflects work I led during my one-year tenure at Etsy, which was still in progress when my role was impacted by corporate restructuring in Nov 2024.
