GoFundMe Design System

Building a design system with impact

After many years as a typical product designer, I knew what it felt like to be limited by design systems. So when I had the opportunity to lead design systems at GoFundMe, I wanted to see what happened when a visual design perspective led the way. When I started, the system looked dated, accessibility gaps were real, and tokens didn’t exist. So, with just an engineering lead and me, we rebuilt components to be modern, usable, and scalable. Now with a team of nine, the design system drives over $40 million a year for the business.

Scaling design systems with tokens

I helped shape the strategy for a scalable design token architecture that kept design and engineering aligned while supporting theming across products. Working closely with my direct report, who drove the project day to day, I provided strategic direction, feedback, and mentorship throughout the effort. Together, we established a three-layer token system that improved consistency and created a more flexible foundation for the design system.

I also helped define the documentation, naming conventions, and adoption strategy that made the system easier for teams to use consistently and scale over time.

Measuring what matters: the $40M moment

My engineering lead and I set up ways to track design system impact. We measured component usage, and launched a survey with our internal teams to get honest feedback on what saved time and what didn’t. Most design system teams stop there. We didn’t. We wanted to know how much all that time saved actually meant.

Our survey answered the big question: how much time were designers and engineers really saving? Crunching average salaries, it came out to over a million and a half dollars a year. That felt huge, but it was just the start.

Enter the Senior Director of Business Operations—fancy title, real math wizard. Together, we stripped out the noise and focused on product-led growth in the product org. Then came the magic: we connected the time our system saved to the product growth that resulted from the work designers and engineers went on to do with that extra time.

The result? Over $40M in business growth in 2024, up from $18M the year before. And it’s not a one-off. More users, more time saved, more product growth—the number keeps climbing. The system doesn’t just add value, it multiplies it.

Here’s a peek at the math, using sample numbers for illustration (not actual company data):

Always evolving

Impact has earned our design system team a lot of trust. Design polish is still our heartbeat, but we keep improving, step by step, always focused on real impact.

Design systems are never “done.” And that’s the fun part. Every improvement sparks the next. Every challenge sets up a new opportunity. We’ll keep building, keep learning, and keep proving what design can really do.