← workcase № 02 · 2021
Apolo Design System — one visual language across every product.
role
Design System Specialist
team
SimpliRoute · design & dev, across LatAm
platforms
Web · React · React Native
timeline
3 months to first release · 2021
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01 · context
SimpliRoute helps businesses run fast, efficient, intelligent deliveries across Latin America. But its digital products had grown without a shared visual language — five different button styles, no consistent colour guide, and a development team rebuilding the same components from scratch for every product. Design was slow; time to market kept slipping.
02 · problem
Three things were slowing every team down.
i.
No shared language
Every product looked different. Five button styles, no colour guide — yet stakeholders wanted one omnichannel feel.
ii.
Rebuilt from scratch
Developers re-coded the same components for each new product, delaying releases and stretching time to market.
iii.
Teams out of sync
Without a common framework, design, development and marketing produced disconnected experiences.
03 · approach
Build the floor once, so every team can stand on it.
01
Audit
Compiled every visual definition across all digital products to see what was actually in use — and what was not.
02
Prioritise
Ranked components in a matrix to decide what to build first and plan resources for the rollout.
03
Foundations
Defined global tokens — typography, borders, effects — with a shared naming convention applied identically in design and code. Figma, Notion and Zeroheight; Storybook on the dev side.
04
Build in parallel
Design and development worked component by component, side by side, in React and React Native — shortening the launch timeline.
"A design system is not the ceiling. It is the floor — and everything good is built on top of it."
— design principle № 1
04 · solution
05 · results
One floor, adopted fast.
87%
Adoption across the company
within months of release
3 mo
From kickoff to first release
2021
+2
New markets unlocked
United States & Brazil
3
Teams onboarded
Expansion · New Modules · Marketing
06 · what i learned
- 01My first design system from scratch — and the project that grew me most in 2021.
- 02Leading a multidisciplinary team across Latin America taught me a system is as much about people and process as it is about tokens.
- 03Shared naming between design and code is the quiet thing that makes everything else possible.