Trout
2022 · Design Systems
-50% Design-to-Development Time
By 2022, Berkadia's digital products lacked a consistent design language, with teams building interfaces independently across different platforms. We created Trout—a unified design system with modular React components and design tokens—to streamline development and create a cohesive user experience across all products.
83+% of Designs Required Custom Components
Audit of existing products revealed that teams:
Built duplicate UI elements across platforms, wasting development resources on redundant work.
Struggled with inconsistent button styles, color schemes, and interaction patterns creating user confusion.
Spent hours aligning designs with brand guidelines due to lack of standardized components.
150+ Reusable Components Built
I led the design system development by:
Collaborating with cross-functional teams to establish design tokens, component architecture, and documentation standards.
Creating a flexible component library balancing brand consistency with adaptability across product contexts.
Developing accessibility guidelines and usage principles that scaled across web and mobile platforms.
4× Faster Component Implementation
After launch:
+70% reduction in design iteration cycles as teams leveraged pre-built, tested components.
Development teams shipped features 3× faster using standardized React components.
Designers reported the system "eliminated guesswork" and "finally gave us a single source of truth."