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Rebuilding the Design Foundation to Unlock Scale and Speed

Atolls is Europe’s leading provider of white-label discount code and cashback platforms, partnering with top publishers to deliver cost-saving offers across 60 publisher domains and four of their own across Europe, the Americas, and EMEA.

 

As the company scaled, it became clear that their ageing design and development workflows were holding teams back. Design files were passed like hot potatoes, engineers coded every UI by hand, and every change felt like a mountain to move. I was brought in to lead the transformation of our workflows and toolsets, championing a new Design System strategy that would help our product teams design, build, and ship faster, with fewer bottlenecks and better cross-functional collaboration.

Success Measures

Context: An Expanding but Fragmented Product Landscape

Atolls’ product suite included:

  • White-label discount platforms (54 publisher brands): Browser-only, subfolder-based, brand-aligned but tech-light.

  • Branded discount experiences (2 brands): Featuring editorial content and affiliate links, with basic functionality.

  • Branded rewards products (2 brands): Cashback, gift cards, user registration, and payments, delivered across web, app, and extension.

 

While product reach and complexity grew, delivery workflows remained stuck in the past. Each update required a designer to mock up pages in Sketch or Figma, an engineer to hand-code everything, and a lengthy QA and release process to follow. The result? Bottlenecks, burnout, and friction everywhere.

Objectives

Create a Design System that allows all Atolls products - across browser, native app, and extension - to be maintained, updated, developed, and deployed in a time- and cost-efficient way, with minimal manual intervention.

 

To ensure the system met the practical and strategic needs of the business, we identified three key questions that would guide our approach and act as measurable indicators of success:

1.

How can we move faster and more efficiently?

2.

How can we implement this in the most impactful way to maximise success?

3.

Can one Design System really serve all our product needs?

Challenge 1: How can we move faster and more efficiently?

Our legacy setup demanded too much time for even minor changes. Designers felt disconnected from implementation, engineers were overwhelmed with rework, and PMs were stuck stitching everything together. It was inefficient, error-prone, and unsustainable.

 

What we did:

  • Ran workshops with product designers, PMs,
    and engineers across all product verticals to
    map out pain points.

  • Conducted a full cross-functional audit of the
    design-to-build workflow.

  • Co-created a streamlined development
    process with clearly defined roles, handoffs,
    and expectations.

 

What changed:

  • Design, Engineering, and Product leads jointly
    proposed a reimagined workflow to the business, securing backing and resources.

  • We rebuilt trust through transparency and collaboration, ensuring teams were supported during the transition.

  • Within 18 months, delivery speed from design to production improved by 82%, with significantly fewer blockers and smoother cross-team collaboration.

Challenge 2: How can we ensure maximum impact with minimal risk?

Rebuilding the workflow was a high-stakes project. It touched every product line, involved multiple teams, and had a steep upfront cost in time and resources. To succeed, we needed a clear, shared vision, and a very tight definition of success.

 

What we did:

  • Defined “success” as having a live Design System
    powering three key domains by March 2022.

  • Gained stakeholder alignment to reprioritise design
    work and reassign resources.

  • Delivered a working component library in under two
    months, well ahead of schedule.

  • Gave engineering teams four months to integrate
    the system into production while designers focused
    on QA and refinement.

 

What changed:

  • Clear timelines and responsibilities enabled focus and momentum.

  • Iterative testing and feedback loops improved quality without slowing progress.

  • The Design System launched on time, with tangible improvements in delivery efficiency and output quality.

Without clear and agreed upon measures of success, this project is doomed from the off

Challenge 3: Can one Design System serve multiple distinct products?

With such varied product lines, each with different features, flows, and brand voices, many doubted a single Design System could serve all needs without flattening identity or bloating the toolkit.

 

What we did:

  • Created a brand-agnostic pattern library focused on solving product and consumer problems first.

  • Developed a dedicated brand layer to allow visual and tonal differentiation without fragmenting the system.

  • Delivered structured coaching and 1:1s with product designers to shift thinking from brand-first to product-first.

  • Built a live, shared pattern library that designers can use, extend, or feed back into, supporting scalable growth.

What changed:

  • Designers now approach challenges with a focus on function, not just form, collaborating more deeply with their PM and engineering counterparts.

  • Brand identity is layered in after core functionality is solved—improving consistency and reducing duplicate efforts.

  • The Design System now supports multiple brands and experiences, with flexibility and scalability built in.

Impact

Case Studies

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