Brief Summary
Implementing the Gravity Design System at Red Bull Media House led to a significant transformation in their internal digital tools. This initiative resulted in a 14-fold increase in productivity across 14 teams, reduced implementation times to as little as 0.08 days, and freed up 23 person-days per team. The cohesive design approach not only streamlined workflows but also enhanced user experience across various platforms.
The Challenge: Fragmented User Experience
When I joined Red Bull Media House, the internal application landscape was fragmented. Each team had its own approach, its own UI, and its own idea of what good UX looked like.
Navigating from one tool to another—whether it was a CMS, DAM, or AI platform—felt like switching between entirely different ecosystems. As the digital portfolio grew, so did the inconsistency and inefficiency.
The result?
A fragmented user experience, duplicated design efforts, and growing inconsistency across applications.
The Mission: Unify and Scale UX
Create a seamless, consistent UX across all internal tools
→ by implementing the Gravity Design System
→ and scaling design maturity across squads
My Role
As Lead Product Designer, I split my time 50/50 between:
My Approach
Scaling 'Gravity' DS Across Applications
The first challenge was operational: how do we bring cohesion to a decentralized system?
Working closely with the central design system team (DPS), I acted as the bridge between Gravity and real product teams—translating its philosophy into practical application. I collaborated directly with squads to implement the design system across our core tools: MarTech platforms, Analytics, CMS, DAM, and AI experiences.
Rather than enforce compliance, I led by example—showing teams how using the system could reduce delivery time from weeks to days, drive more design productivity, and improve developer handoff. By refining component usage, advocating for system-driven design, and sharing reusable patterns, Gravity went from “nice idea” to our default foundation.
Building the UX Practice from the Ground Up
But adopting a design system isn’t just about components—it’s about culture.
While 50% of my time was hands-on product work, the other half was focused on building the UX practice inside Media IT. I later (few months into my Red Bull journey) led a team of three designers (2 remotely– 1 Senior, 2 Junior) and set out to empower not just them—but squads, PMs, and developers—with the tools and knowledge they needed to design well.
I introduced a new user research tool, developed a self-serve UX toolbox with templates and how-to guides, and ran workshops on everything from usability testing to ideation methods. I worked 1:1 with product teams to mentor them through discovery and validation, ensuring insights were always feeding design decisions.
Our goal wasn't to own every design—it was to enable everyone to design better.
Encouraged teams to focus on journeys over individual screens to uncover improvement opportunities across the product experience.
Integrating AI into Media Workflows
At Red Bull, we designed internal AI-powered tools to enhance media workflows to protect sensitive data, enabling teams to work faster and smarter without relying on third-party platforms.
GenAI Chatbot | Internal version of Open AI's ChatGPT. |
|---|---|
Scopify – AI for Research Synthesis | A tool that summarizes large volumes of research, helping teams extract key insights quickly and reduce analysis time during discovery phases. |
Storify – Repurposing Interview Archives | We built a chat-based tool allowing media teams to query historical interviews and surface athlete quotes or themes to inspire new stories and campaigns. |
AI-Powered Search – Natural Language for Media | A natural language search tool for our internal video/image libraries. It enables users to find assets using descriptive prompts, bypassing rigid metadata structures. |
Design System in Focus: Gravity
A B2B design system built for internal tools, Gravity provided the foundation for scalable, branded, and efficient product development.
My Role w/ the Design System:
Advocate adoption across squads
Implement the design system across our core tools
Work with Design System Team to evolve components and patterns
Prevent misuse by educating teams on how to design, not just what to use
Review implementations to ensure brand and UX consistency
The Impact ✅
14x increase in design + dev productivity
0.08–5 days average implementation time per team
Consistent, branded experience across all core internal apps
Embedded research practices across squads
Reusable UX tooling adopted by squads beyond UX team
A culture shift toward intentional, system-driven design
The Takeaway
This role taught me that real impact comes from balance:
Doing the work, and enabling others to do it well.
By scaling both a design system and a design culture, we turned a fragmented toolset into a cohesive ecosystem—one that feels like Red Bull, inside and out.
Samples of Design System Adoption
