[ Case study ]
Dow Jones Unified Design System
Maturing the Dow Jones Unified Design System (UDS): adapting a B2C news design system (NewsKit) into a themeable, token-driven foundation for B2B enterprise products like Factiva, with a repeatable build-and-handoff process other teams can follow.
- Client
- Dow Jones - Unified Design System
- Role
- Senior UX Architect · Design Systems
- Year
- 2023
- Disciplines
- Design Systems, Design Tokens, Figma, Accessibility, Developer Handoff, Enterprise UX
450
Instances from a single button component
B2C → B2B
NewsKit consumer system adapted for enterprise
6+
Token families: color, type, grid, shadow, overlay, motion
[ Information architecture ]
Foundations
- Color palette
- Core tokens
- Shadows
- Overlays
- Grid
Components
- Actions & Inputs
- Feedback & Status
- Layout
- Media
- Navigation
- Text
Structure
- Token
- Element
- Pattern
- Template
Handoff
- Annotation spec
- Status
- Variants & breakpoints
Governance
- Theme Swapper
- Libraries
- Naming conventions
Confidentiality notice
This work spans active platform strategy, shared AI capabilities, and multiple product surfaces. To respect that, this case study stays intentionally high-level, focusing on the cross-brand design problem, platform principles, and reusable outcomes rather than brand-specific implementation details.
In 2021 our team began building Dow Jones' Unified Design System (UDS). I worked on maturing it: adapting a B2C-focused news design system (NewsKit) for B2B enterprise products like Factiva, and shaping the tools and process for building components, theming, and developer handoff. This is the playbook for how the system is built and how it scales.
What a design system actually is
A design system is the industry standard for creating user experiences that are scalable and repeatable across a product portfolio. It is not just a component library: it is the full set of standards, accessibility, documentation, and principles, plus the toolkits, the Figma library, the Storybook library, design tokens, the GitHub repository, and the governance, that make those standards real.
The challenge: a B2C system for a B2B product
NewsKit was built for consumer news. Factiva is a dense, professional B2B product. Adapting the system meant rethinking theming, tokens, and components for enterprise UI while staying compatible with the legacy system, and making the whole process a repeatable template that future teams could follow well beyond the design system itself.
- Adapt a consumer (B2C) system for an enterprise (B2B) product
- Stay compatible with the legacy NewsKit gallery and naming
- Make the build-and-handoff process repeatable for other teams
[ Protected layer ]
The full case study is available on request.
High-fidelity screens, information architecture and the detailed process for this enterprise project are shared under NDA. Enter the access password, or request access and I will share the full walkthrough.