Ground up, atomic design system
Ovwerview
A full atomic design system and global website redesign for Standard Chartered, built to bring consistency to how the bank's brand is delivered across every market it operates in.
The challenge
Standard Chartered's global website had no component system. That meant every market was rebuilding the same things from scratch, burning time and budget on duplicate work, and producing inconsistency between the global site and local market sites. It was also a trust problem internally: teams across the business didn't feel heard, and didn't feel equipped with the right tools to do their job well. Having worked with the bank for several years, I was brought in to fix this at the root, not just patch the symptoms.
The approach
- Interviewed 46 stakeholders across the business over 5 weeks, to establish the website's real purpose, its users, and what success would actually look like
- Analysed the qualitative and quantitative data to identify distinct user groups and the specific functionality each needed
- Delivered a detailed findings and recommendations report back to leadership
- Ran a 4-day design sprint to surface and resolve the hardest structural blockers
- Resolved open questions through ideation, prototyping, and user testing
- Handed off to development with full design system documentation, built to work within the bank's existing tech stack
The outcome
The result was a centralised design system that let marketing teams in every market build content quickly and consistently, instead of duplicating effort market by market. That consistency mattered beyond efficiency: it reinforced the quality and credibility of the bank's brand at a global scale. Teams that previously felt unheard now had a shared toolkit built directly from their input.
Reflection
This project is a good example of design work that pays off operationally, not just visually. The win was time and money saved across markets, and a business that finally had one shared language for its digital presence.
Rough, I know, but pen and paper are always my go to starting point.
Design sprint, which I facilitated, with global stakeholders.
Test, iterate, test, iterate.
Homepage design.
Various designs and mockups. We all love a mockup, right.
Page designs.
Off canvas carousel to deliver stats and key info.
Sample components from the design system.
