workstreams.ai Design System
This is a story told from Edu Porfirio's perspective. Edu is the founder at KA'A.
From Brand Director, leading the rebranding project for workstreams.ai, I developed my collaboration role to Design System Manager and got deeply involved on creating a variety of UI components for this amazing SaaS product.
Translating brand assets into UI elements
The day-to-day creation of marketing assets, such as internal and external communication documents, promotional videos, social media content, and layouts for entire pages of the company's official website, had already reached a satisfying level of consistency and process maturity. However, I felt that there was still a lot of room for improvement, especially in the interaction with the product team.
By the third quarter of 2022, our design team was made up of four members: myself, an illustrator, and two UX/UI designers. I had always been a big fan of Figma and played a key role in transitioning the team to this more agile and flexible tool for managing design assets. However, at that time, we didn’t have a solid design system in place. We were mainly working with some basic color and typography styles. I knew we needed to take things to the next level, but my limited involvement with the engineering team made it hard to justify the effort.
Then, in the last quarter of 2022, a series of internal and external events shook up our design team. As a result, I was left as the sole designer handling everything for the last marketing pushes of the year and throughout the first quarter of 2023. That’s right—just me, the only designer in the company!
Despite being solo, I managed to keep the marketing campaigns rolling, support the product team’s needs, and continue our ongoing discussions about enhancing user experience. It seemed like an impossible task, but it was a chance for me to show what I could really do.
I started by overhauling and organizing all of our design files in Figma. I set up projects, files, thumbnails, pages, styles, and eventually, variables. I standardized our interaction processes, user management, permissions, and the way we handled libraries and components. This systematic approach made everything flow more smoothly. Of course, it wasn’t perfect—no design system ever is. It’s a living thing, always evolving. But one thing was clear: my productivity skyrocketed. Suddenly, all departments had access to our brand’s culture and direction, product elements, and marketing creatives.
Building complex components
The fact that my productivity soared and deliveries were consistently solid was proof that a cohesive, functional system was exactly what we needed. And once new designers joined the team, scaling our work would be a breeze.
The result and impact
It’s incredible to see the value of design not just as something that looks good, but as a productive system. The benefits were felt across the board, from the product itself to areas like tutorial video production, support, and commercials. Everything from the idea to the script to the graphic animations happened in a smooth, orchestrated manner. In that sense, working on workstreams.ai was an awesome experience—seeing it grow, and helping build a small, highly productive team.
By the third quarter of 2023, our team had grown to two designers who were completely in sync with the brand and product design principles. Features were being tested and prototyped at least two to three times faster than before. This speed boost meant more iterations, smoother knowledge management, and the creation of new insights—whether it was about the product, our users, or the processes we followed. Implementing a true design system isn’t just a luxury; it’s a game-changer for everyone involved.