As a Senior Product Designer, I played a key role in structuring and documenting the Pacific Design System, a centralized source of truth for designers, engineers, and product teams. By leveraging Supernova to scale documentation, we improved design consistency, development speed, and cross-functional collaboration across mobile and web platforms.
Problem
Before the Pacific Design System, teams faced several challenges:
Inconsistent UI implementation, leading to fragmented user experiences.
Lack of a centralized documentation system, resulting in misaligned design and development efforts.
Slow design-to-development handoffs, increasing time spent on redundant tasks.
High communication friction between teams, leading to inefficiencies in execution.
Goals
Establish a structured, scalable documentation site to support designers and engineers.
Define clear component guidelines and specifications for consistent UI implementation.
Reduce design and development inefficiencies by improving accessibility and discoverability.
Enable faster product development cycles through reusable, systematized components.
Approach
Structuring the Documentation Site with Supernova
To create a robust and scalable documentation hub, I helped set up the Pacific Design System site using Supernova, ensuring:
Real-time synchronization with Figma, keeping design specifications up-to-date.
Component breakdowns with clear guidelines on usage, states, and behaviors.
Cross-functional accessibility, making it easy for engineers, designers, and PMs to align.
Scalability, allowing new patterns and components to be added seamlessly over time.
Defining Core Components & Patterns
I led the documentation efforts for essential UI components, some of which included:
Status Pill – A non-interactive element that visually conveys system statuses (success, warning, info, etc.).
Banner – Informational and interactive messaging for alerts, tips, and warnings.
Text Field – Input fields with accessibility and usability best practices.
Dropdown & Search Inputs – Standard dropdowns, autocomplete variations, and structured selection patterns.
Pagination & Carousel – Navigation and content exploration elements.
Motion Guidelines – Defining how objects transition in space within the UI.
Improving Engineering and Design Efficiency
By standardizing components and providing structured documentation, we achieved:
Clearer design-to-engineering handoffs, reducing ambiguity and misinterpretations.
Reusable design tokens and systematized patterns, decreasing redundant design work.
Faster onboarding for new team members, reducing ramp-up time.
Learnings
The Pacific Design System has proven instrumental in scaling design and development efficiency, reinforcing the importance of documentation, collaboration, and systematization. By implementing Supernova, we streamlined the way teams interact with design specifications, ensuring faster and more consistent product execution.
Results + impact
The implementation of Supernova-powered documentation has led to:
20-25% faster design-to-development workflows, minimizing unnecessary back-and-forth communication.
30% reduction in engineering implementation time, enabling quicker UI builds.
15-20% decrease in design redundancies, reducing repetitive component creation.
Accelerated time-to-market, cutting product launch timelines by 3-4 weeks.
Improved cross-team collaboration, aligning design, product, and engineering teams more effectively.
Next steps
Expand documentation to include advanced components and interaction patterns.
Enhance accessibility guidelines to ensure inclusive design practices.
Improve automation and integrations for seamless design-to-code handoffs.
Track ongoing efficiency improvements through adoption metrics.