Santander

Aș a design system lead for Europe at Santander — a multinational banking institution based in Spain — I split my time between hands-on work growing Flame, the bank’s design system, and more organizational aspects, defining and implementing processes.

Note: Due to contractual restrictions, I can’t disclose detailed information about this project.

ROLES

Design System Lead

Challenges

The role’s main responsibilities include coordinating design initiatives with teams in Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the UK to ensure a consistent and efficient design strategy across these international teams. Supporting the core European design team is also a key aspect, focusing on maintaining design consistency and streamlining processes for improved productivity.

In addition, the role involves working closely with business stakeholders, design leads, and the global design system team to establish governance and support strategies. This collaboration is critical to improving the evolution of the design system and ensuring it aligns with both current organizational needs and future advancements in online banking technology.

The approach

In approaching the challenges of the role, my strategy was to act as a facilitator, fostering communication and collaboration across teams to create a coherent design language for a seamless user experience.

I actively engaged with team peers and design leads, contributing to the definition of key components:

  • A governance model to help users understand the process to follow when improving existing components or creating new ones.
  • A support strategy tailored to users’ needs, incorporating synchronous and asynchronous communication channels, office hours, and support sessions.
  • An improvement roadmap, crafted based on the results of an empathy workshop conducted with designers and other users of the design system.

All in all, I focused my efforts on helping the design teams improve their workflows, pushing the boundaries of the design system, and actively participating in its ongoing evolution.

Results

To improve design efficiency, speed, and consistency across teams, I:

  • Simplified libraries by 35% and reduced components by 7% through restructuring files.
  • Introduced variables to support multimodal libraries, make better use of design tokens, and establish design patterns.
  • Implemented office hours to provide on-demand, in-depth support for complex issues.