Yiran Zhu
Yiran Zhu

Design System at Scale: Governed 54 Components to Unify Enterprise UX and Eliminate 60% of UI Fix Tickets at PROS

Design System UI Design Accessibility
Company PROS
Role UI Design
Timeline 2018–2019
Team UI designers, UX designers, researchers, PMs and engineers
My contribution Maintained company design system, UI design, production-ready UI code
Key Impact
60% UI fix ticket reduction per sprint
20+ Core components in full parity
100% WCAG AA compliance

[01 Background]

About PROS

PROS built enterprise pricing optimization software for airlines and retail companies — complex, data-heavy products where pricing analysts needed to execute strategies, analyze performance, and discover revenue opportunities.

My Role

Early in my career, as a UI designer, my role was to govern the "source of truth" across 54 components to ensure the organization could scale without accruing design and engineering debt. This was a critical part of PROS's migration strategy to a cloud-based system.

[02 Design System]

Challenge

Discrepancies between Sketch files, documentation, and the code library were generating many UI fix tickets and slowing down sprint velocity across product teams.

Solution

I led a gap analysis of 132 component variants, identifying misalignments that caused friction during handoffs. I then drove an alignment process to move 20+ core components into full parity across design and production.

Component alignment across design and production

Impact

Eliminated an average 60% of UI fix tickets per sprint — freeing engineering capacity for new feature development and unblocking teams from time-consuming rework cycles.

[03 High Density Data Visualization]

Challenge

Standardizing complex data visualization tools for pricing analysis without sacrificing technical feasibility — ensuring consistent behavior across 19 different chart types used across 4 product lines.

Solution

I acted as the bridge between user-centered standards and architectural constraints, standardizing a universal tooltip pattern across all 19 chart types and 4 product lines.

Tooltip patterns

Impact

Enabled developers to stop building one-off customizations, directly increasing implementation speed and delivering consistent data visualization behavior across the entire product suite.

[04 Governance & System Integrity]

Consultative Design

When teams requested custom components, I functioned as a "system consultant" — evaluating the frequency of the need and proposing existing patterns to prevent library fragmentation.

Inclusive Design

I ensured 100% of my components met WCAG AA standards, recognizing that accessibility is a non-negotiable requirement for enterprise-grade SaaS products.