Paradigm Design System

At a Glance

As GivingData scaled to serve 99,000+ users, we needed a better way to design, build, and grow. Paradigm, our first design system, was the infrastructure we created to bring consistency, speed, and accessibility to a rapidly evolving product suite.

Challenges

As GivingData grew across hundreds of foundations, new features kept landing without a shared system underneath. That created three problems:

• Inconsistent experiences: Styles and patterns drifted, so the platform felt patchy and harder to learn.
• Slow delivery: Every new feature meant designing and building from scratch, which slowed teams down and invited more inconsistency.
• Accessibility gaps: WCAG mattered for a diverse user base, but without shared guidelines it was hard to hit the mark reliably.

Paradigm was the solution: a shared design system for consistency, speed, and accessibility.

Role

I led the creation of Paradigm from the ground up:

• defining design principles
• building a shared component library
• documenting accessibility standards

This wasn’t just about picking colors and buttons. It meant partnering with engineers, product managers, and leadership to make sure Paradigm worked for everyone, across every corner of the platform.

I wore a lot of hats: researcher, system architect, visual designer, documentation nerd, and internal advocate for usability and accessibility.

Process

Building Paradigm was an iterative, scrappy, and highly collaborative process.

Here’s how we made it happen:

• Research: I audited existing UI patterns across the product to spot inconsistencies, pain points, and accessibility gaps.
• Define Standards: I created foundational design guidelines covering layout, typography, color, form behavior, and interaction patterns.
• Build Components: I partnered closely with engineering to design and build a scalable React-based component library, focusing on reusability and WCAG compliance.
• Document Everything: I wrote clear, friendly documentation so that designers and developers could use Paradigm without guesswork.
• Rollout and Adoption: I led regular sessions to onboard teams, gather feedback, and refine the system based on real-world needs.

Paradigm wasn’t a one-and-done project. It became part of how we designed and shipped ongoing work.

Impact

Paradigm changed how GivingData built products.

• Consistency: We replaced dozens of one-off styles and ad hoc solutions with unified, predictable design patterns.
• Speed: Teams could design and ship features faster, cutting design + dev time significantly.
• Accessibility: With WCAG standards baked in from the start, Paradigm made GivingData’s platform more usable for all users.
• Scalability: As the user base grew past 99,000, Paradigm scaled with it. No more reinventing the wheel for every new feature.

Today, Paradigm supports 200+ foundations and powers features across the entire product suite.

Where It’s Headed

Paradigm was built to scale with GivingData, and it has, just not in the way we originally expected. We've since moved design system QA to an AI-directed practice, where Claude Code checks new work against the audit rules automatically rather than relying on manual review. The system itself is evolving under that new practice now. You can read more about how that works in Prototyping in Production.