My Role
Product Design Intern
My Team
VP of Design and Eng, Product Engineer and Bussiness Systems Analyst
Timeline
4 months
I spearheaded the development, documentation, and governance of TD Securities’ enterprise design system during my internship, driving adoption across 8+ teams and reducing QA and onboarding friction. By auditing and consolidating 100+ components/variants, running UAT testing with engineering, and hosting executive workshops, I scaled a simple, consistent, and highly usable system for designers and developers.
As the first design intern joining a fast-paced TD innovation team, I immediately noticed fragmentation: Figma assets were out of sync with deployed code, components proliferated with dozens of undocumented variants, and engineers struggled to implement consistent UI. There was no single source of truth—scrappy foundations around color, typography, components and interactions, and little documentation for onboarding new contributors.
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My projects at TD are currently locked. If you’d like to know more about my internship experience or the projects I worked on, feel free to schedule a call with me!
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TD Securities' design system suffered from severe variant sprawl—over 100 mismatched components and edge-case variants existed without centralized documentation or a single source of truth. Figma assets were out of sync with deployed code, creating constant friction during handoffs between design and engineering. Product, engineering, and design teams worked in silos with no standardized terminology or shared protocols, resulting in wasted time, inconsistent deliverables, and prolonged QA cycles that slowed down every release.
Without governance processes in place, components were frequently duplicated, modified, and re-released without proper review, compromising product reliability and making it nearly impossible to maintain consistency across teams. Both designers and developers struggled to effectively adopt and scale the system, designers couldn't find the right components to use, and engineers didn't know which implementations matched the intended designs. New team members faced steep onboarding challenges with no starter kits or best practices documentation to guide them, perpetuating the cycle of confusion and inefficiency across 8+ product teams.
I audited and streamlined over 100 components and variants using atomic design principles, organizing everything from foundational elements like color, typography, and interactions to complex UI components including alerts, modals, badges, breadcrumbs, navigation, and steppers. For each component, I created comprehensive documentation with design tokens, code snippets, and usage patterns that both designers and developers could reference. To prevent future variant sprawl, I established governance protocols with standardized naming conventions, review workflows, and variant management processes that kept Figma files and deployed code synchronized as the system scaled.
Partnering with engineering, I implemented a UAT testing framework that used Excel audits to track and verify every component against documented success and failure criteria. I created a Design System Starter Kit with guided onboarding materials and best practices, then distributed it across 8+ product teams to accelerate adoption. To secure executive buy-in and gather continuous feedback, I hosted showcase workshops for the VP of Engineering and VP of Design that demonstrated the system's value and facilitated rapid team onboarding. These efforts reduced developer QA cycles, eliminated design-code mismatches, and established a single source of truth that teams could confidently build upon.