Alight Solutions is a global HR software platform reaching 35+ million users worldwide. The Alight Worklife Design System was developed to unify the visual and interaction language across products, while remaining flexible enough to scale and adapt to evolving needs.
Product teams across Alight were working from inconsistent UI kits, leading to fragmented experiences across the platform. My goal was to help establish a single source of truth — one that every team could access, trust, and build from.
I led the design side of a three-platform system — Figma for design, Zeroheight for documentation, and Storybook for development — ensuring every discipline had what they needed while staying in sync with the rest of the organization.
A living design system that evolves alongside product needs. By aligning on design decisions at the start of each project rather than mid-build, my work contributed to a 40% reduction in reworks.
Intake and Audit
Before the design system existed, design files and implemented UI varied significantly from project to project. Working in isolation, teams had created their own solutions, leading to an accumulated debt of inconsistencies across the platform.
I began by conducting a comprehensive audit of existing design files and patterns. This involved tracking down creative files across teams, documenting every component and pattern in use, and identifying where designs diverged from what was actually built. The goal was to understand the full scope of inconsistency before consolidating everything into a unified system.
With files collected, I cataloged 50+ components and patterns, categorizing everything directly in Figma. The most pervasive inconsistency we uncovered was spacing — teams had been applying it differently across projects, which made incorporating Figma's Auto Layout a key early priority to bring things into alignment. Changes and updates were documented in Zeroheight, and we kept the broader organization informed through biweekly and monthly company-wide emails. All tasks and projects were tracked in real-time through a centralized Jira backlog, giving the team clear visibility into progress at every stage.
With a full picture of the system's gaps in hand, we were ready to start building something better.
Once the files were collected and organized, I began a full cataloging of all design elements based on previous designs and products. I reviewed original files to identify recurring patterns and categorized them accordingly.
Building a Systematic Approach
With a complete inventory of existing patterns, we established an agile workflow with two-week sprints and regular ceremonies. I played an active role across all of it — running ceremonies, managing the backlog, and contributing as a designer — spanning the full spectrum of design system work: defining and building new components, documenting usage guidelines, and researching industry best practices to inform our decisions.
Defining Foundations
Cross-functional teams collaborated to establish the core foundations: color, typography, grid and spacing, accessibility standards, and brand elements. These became the building blocks for everything that followed.
I built these foundations as Figma component libraries with variants, establishing a team library that could be updated centrally and pushed to designers across the organization. This infrastructure ensured that when we refined a token or updated a style, every team could receive those improvements immediately — keeping everyone aligned without any extra lift.
Examples of components being used within the design system.
Establishing Tokens and Styles
As components and patterns took shape, establishing a shared token system became a top priority. I defined design tokens covering color, typography, spacing, and border radius and elevation — giving designers and developers a common language for styles across every product and platform.
Tokens were handed off directly in Figma, making it straightforward for developers to reference and implement styles without ambiguity. The real power of this approach showed up over time: when a style needed to change, updating a token cascaded improvements across the entire system instantly, rather than requiring manual updates component by component.
Prioritizing Through Governance
As components and patterns took shape, establishing a shared token system became a top priority. I defined design tokens for color, typography, spacing, border radius, and elevation—giving designers and developers a common language across every product and platform.
Tokens were delivered directly through Figma, making it easy for developers to reference and implement them without ambiguity. The real value of this approach emerged over time: when a visual style needed to change, updating a token propagated improvements across the entire system instantly, rather than requiring manual updates component by component.
Cards were a component that went through multiple iterations due to needs changing across Alight products
A Living System Across Three Platforms
The design system lives across three integrated platforms — Figma for design, Zeroheight for documentation, and Storybook for development. My focus was primarily on the design and documentation sides, ensuring components were well-defined in Figma and clearly documented in Zeroheight, while collaborating closely with developers on the Storybook implementation. When a component evolves on one platform, it's updated across all three — keeping designers, developers, and stakeholders aligned.
By establishing clear standards and resolving design decisions upfront rather than mid-project, we achieved a 40% reduction in reworks.
The Figma library serves as the living source of truth for designers. I maintained this library using Figma's branching feature, which allowed the team to test and refine updates before publishing them organization-wide. When changes went live, designers across Alight could update their files with a single click, ensuring everyone had access to the latest components and patterns.
Zeroheight provides comprehensive documentation for the design system, offering guidance on when and how to use each component. I contributed extensively to this documentation, writing usage guidelines, defining best practices, and ensuring that teams had the context they needed to implement components correctly and maintain consistency across products.
Storybook gives developers interactive access to component code and behavior. I collaborated closely with the development team throughout the build process, reviewing implementations to ensure components looked and functioned as intended. This partnership between design and development was essential to maintaining quality and consistency in production.
Contact Me!
Phone: 309-258-6616
Email: kegan.flairty@gmail.com
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©2026 Kegan Flairty
Senior Product Designer