What is the usecase of this Design System ?
Enrich+ is an internal, enterprise-scale B2B platform built for Publicis Sapient’s staffing and HR
teams to manage project allocation and staffing across ~20,000 employees in India.
Team structure
Project Manager (India & US) · Design Manager (India) · 6 UX Designers · 3 UI Designers · Sr. Manager, Technology · 2 Design System Owners (a senior designer and me).
My role
I was one of two design system owners, working alongside a senior designer. Below were my core contributions:
Helped build the design system foundation from scratch — color palettes, shadow styles, spacing guidelines, and icon library.
Defined the token and variable system with clear naming conventions.
Ran component analysis with POD owners to map specific component needs across every UX flow.
Engineered flexible, scalable master components with built-in states (default, hover, focus, active, disabled) for consistent, accessible behavior.
Authored documentation i.e. component anatomy, spacing, properties, states, and usage guidelines.
Client
Publicis Groupe
Project timeline
Jul 2024 - Sep 2024
Industry
Information Technology
Tools used
Defining scope
Did we do branding as well ?
Nope — branding was out of scope. We worked within the existing brand guidelines set by
‘Marcel’, Publicis’s internal AI platform, and focused entirely on building a scalable system on top of them.
Ways of working
How we used to work
We ran in an Agile setup — flexible, iterative, and (yes) full of MS Teams calls across India and U.S. time zones. Business requirements flowed from the PO team, UX validated the flows, and our design system fed directly into hi-fi design and development.
Setting up foundation
Fundamental components
Colours
Primary, secondary, tertiary, functional, and text colour palettes.
Spacers
Helps maintain consistent spacing and layout across different elements, components and pages in an interface.
Icons
Thin line icon library by Linetemp.
Imagery
Exudes attributes such as dynamic, dominant, hero, courageous and strong.
Setting up variables
Token library
This was essentially the backbone of our design system.
Challenge
Everything was happening all at once!
It was clear to me that anyone who was reviewing the hi-fi designs was not much focused on the atomic level changes that needed to be done in the design system.
Problem's impact
Project Impact of the Problem
Increased man-hours were being spent on design system maintenance as the number of components grew.
To address this issue, my PM began discussing the possibility of hiring more designers.
But even if we had hired more people, the problem would have persisted due to our files experiencing increased loading times, frequent crashes, and constant "storage full" notifications.
Problem
Our approach was broken, here's the math
For a single Button component:
Sizes (5) × States (5: default, hover, focus, active, disabled) × Edges (2: curved/rounded) ×
Dropdown (2: true/false) × Icon position (3: none/leading/trailing) = 300 variants.
At 9 layers per variant, that’s 2,700 layers — for one component.
Multiplied across the system, itwas unmaintainable.
Solution
How I proposed we handle the situation!
Implementation
3 step process
Below is a mini example of input component that was made using above mentioned approach.
Impact
Impact of the new approach
91.67%
components reduced from 300 to just 25.
91.67%
layers reduced from
2,700 to just 225.
This atomic level change in our design system proved instrumental in creating a sustainable design system that was flexible to use and easy to implement.
Documentation
What all was covered ?
We documented every component, detailing its structure, spacing, properties, states, and more.
Structure breakdown
Spacing details
Property description
Testimonial
Sanjeev Hegde
UX Lead @Publicis Sapient
"It has been an absolute pleasure having you as part of our team. Your dedication to mastering design systems and modern design practices has been truly inspiring and had a last lasting impact on the project overall."
Tara Singh
Senior Designer, L2 @Publicis Sapient
"I enjoyed working with Ankit, whose deep understanding of design systems and exceptional communication skills greatly contributed to our project's success. A talented designer and a compelling speaker, he consistently inspires and elevates team collaboration in a very positive manner."
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