shyftplan: an enterprise scheduling UI, rebuilt on a design system engineering actually used

Full redesign and design system for a post-Series A workforce platform. The brief said “modernize the UI.” The real job was giving design and engineering one foundation they would both build from.

The brief vs. the real problem. The ask was a visual refresh to match new branding. The audit said otherwise: the Figma kit and the live platform had no consistent base, with disorganized color, inconsistent type, and rigid components. A repaint on that foundation would rot within a release or two, so I built a tokenized design system instead of a new skin.

Adapted the brand, did not copy it. The brand purple (#9865F6) was too light to read on the data-dense screens this audience lives in, non-technical users on small laptops and tablets who think in Excel. I shifted it to a darker #8C59F5 for legibility and accessibility, and derived a neutral gray for structure. Usable beat literal.

Cut a whole token layer. I started with the textbook four tiers (values, primitives, semantics, component tokens). Testing showed component tokens added complexity for no payoff, since semantic tokens already covered every case. I removed the layer to keep the system lean, and aligned token names with the developers in Airtable so design and code referenced the exact same things.

Result

• 4.7/5 across the Apple App Store and Google Play, on a redesign spanning desktop, iOS, and the component library.
• ~30% less design-and-development time, the clearest sign the system was built from, not shelved.
• Full redesign plus design system plus new features for a post-Series A enterprise SaaS, shipped on a foundation shared with engineering.

Why this matters to you. A design system only pays for itself if engineering builds from it. The win here was not the fresh purple, it was cutting design-and-dev time by pruning the system down to what both sides actually used.