Gillian Nieh | Home From College

Rethinking design system governance for global adoption

rundown

Researched and proposed new design system workflows and governance models for top global accounting firm

type

Internship project

Design systems

Stakeholder interviews

timeline

June 2025 - August 2025

tools

Figma, Storybook,

Supernova

The project

At Konrad Group, I worked on the redesign and governance of a large-scale design system for a global professional services network. The project aimed to unify disparate digital experiences under a cohesive visual and functional framework while accounting for the complexity of multiple regional teams.

My impact

Here's how I supported the project:

Stakeholder interviews

Conducted interviews across brand, UX, leadership, engineering, and product owners to identify pain points with current design system.

Competitive analysis

Analyzed 10+ industry standard and competitor design systems to surface “North Star” patterns for accessibility, governance, and scalability.

Governance recommendations

Proposed frameworks to help balance consistency with local flexibility across regions.

Diagrams

Designed understandable diagrams to illustrate governance workflows.

My takeaways

This summer was full of learning–particularly in a product strategy/design ops role.

Each stakeholder needs a different kind of evidence

I realized that aligning different types of thinkers means adapting how you communicate. For business leaders, it’s about saving costs and sales. For engineers, it’s about efficiency gains.

Design systems are more than just pixels

I used to think design systems were just maintained quietly in the background. But they’re actually the outcome of collaboration across every team: a bit of politics, process, and craft.

Governance is real, and very complicated

I didn’t know there was even a dialogue around design system governance. Now I can talk about why centralized or federated models work for the needs of a company–with confidence.