GRIT is the design system at Progressive Leasing. I joined while it was still in it’s infancy and eventually ended up leading the team.
When I started, the system was just getting off of the ground. The component library was small and adoption was low.
At it’s peak, we had 12 designers using and contributing to the system, and the UI components were used by hundreds of engineers across the company.
Adoption grew from light usage in 2 product teams to deep integration across all product teams. Virtually all inconsistent UI patterns were replaced, creating a more predictable customer experience. Implementation times for most front-end tasks dropped an estimated 20-30%. Evangelizing the system and running regular design–engineering syncs significantly increased trust and engineer buy-in, while opening contributions to anyone boosted designer buy-in too.
To help drive adoption of the design system, my team created a documentation site for both engineers and designers.
I surveyed designers and engineers to identify what information mattered most, audited established systems like Google Material for best practices, and user tested site prototypes internally.
We wrote extensive component usage guidelines and partnered with engineers to write code documentation.