A new design system, built for scale and consistency
Context
Seequent is a global leader in geoscience software, offering powerful tools for modelling, analysis, and collaboration. As the company expanded its suite of cloud-based products, design and development teams faced growing complexity.
Each product team worked in silos, leading to inconsistent UI patterns, duplicated components, and fragmented user experiences. The existing design system was outdated and poorly integrated with development workflows, making even small updates time-consuming.
To support Seequent’s growth, a new design system was needed—one that was scalable, cohesive, and deeply integrated into both design and engineering processes.
Problem
Inconsistency across products: There were multiple disconnected design systems, and teams often rebuilt similar components from scratch.
Inefficient workflows: Designers spent excessive time recreating patterns, while developers lacked clear guidance for implementation.
Outdated tools: The existing system didn’t align with current development frameworks, especially as the team moved toward Material UI (MUI).
Scaling effectively required more than just new components—it demanded shared language, structured tooling, and stronger collaboration across disciplines.
Objectives
The goal was to design and implement a unified, future-proof design system that would:
Reduce duplication and improve UI consistency across products
Align design tools (Figma) with development tools (MUI, Storybook)
Enable faster prototyping and streamlined feature delivery
Support scalability across teams, themes, and product types
Research
To understand the scope and needs, we:
Audited multiple Seequent products to map component overlaps and inconsistencies
Interviewed designers and developers to identify workflow gaps and pain points
Analysed existing design libraries and engineering frameworks
Evaluated tools like Material UI to ensure alignment with front-end needs
This research highlighted the need for standardisation through tokens, shared naming conventions, and integrated libraries.
Design
As design lead, I was responsible for shaping the system strategy, tooling, and component architecture.
Key initiatives included:
Adopting MUI: We aligned the system to Material UI’s open-source foundation for better integration with engineering.
Customising Figma libraries: I created scalable component sets in Figma, with Seequent-specific tokens for colour, typography, spacing, and iconography.
Implementing tokens and variables: This enabled consistency across products and made the system easier to maintain.
Rolling out incrementally: A phased implementation ensured team buy-in and allowed for rapid iteration based on feedback.
Facilitating collaboration: Regular design/dev reviews helped validate components and ensured a shared understanding of intent and feasibility.
Results
The impact of the new design system has been significant:
Estimated 80% reduction in time spent preparing and validating product designs
Streamlined designer workflows using reusable components and layout templates
Stronger alignment between design and engineering, reducing visual QA issues
A scalable system that now underpins Seequent’s evolving product ecosystem
The adoption of MUI themes and a roadmap to Material 3 ensure the system can evolve alongside the business, supporting future growth without reinventing the wheel.