MoveSpring | 2018–2020
B2B2C SaaS
Design Systems
UI Design
Visual Design
Project at a glance
ROLE
Lead Designer
TEAM
Head of Product Design, Engineering
TIMELINE
Ongoing throughout tenure
Overview
While at MoveSpring, I owned the design system end to end and defined how the brand actually showed up for our end consumers in app. I identified a rigid, MVP-era system driven by hard-coded constraints and pushed to transform it into something flexible and modular, built to evolve alongside the company and our clients' growing needs. I defined initial styles, components, and interaction patterns, then evolved the system over time as the product grew. When our tooling changed, I also led the system's migration from Sketch to Figma, adapting the entire library without slowing feature delivery.
Impact
Influenced engineering to adopt the component library in building the app, reducing QA time, speeding up feature delivery, and improving product quality
Enabled a two-person design team to deliver dozens of new features quickly, without design becoming a bottleneck
Gave MoveSpring the flexibility to support any client's needs, from simple one-off challenges to fully custom, multi-feature wellness programs
Helped power MoveSpring's shift from one-time event revenue to an annualized SaaS model with flexibility in features and challenge structure
Background
MoveSpring brings something for everyone
MoveSpring's mission is to help companies and organizations bring activity, wellness, and engagement to their employees through a fun, easy-to-use activity challenge platform.
No client is alike—some want to amp up competition among coworkers while others want an inclusive, educational approach that brings people together. MoveSpring offers something for everyone through highly customizable challenges and a range of social and engagement features.
But it didn't start out that way.
Learning from launching an MVP
MoveSpring launched in early 2018 under real engineering-driven constraints: every challenge had to contain exactly three activity modes and every challenge preview was boxed into a fixed container. As a new team working quickly to get an MVP into customers' hands, that rigidity was a reasonable tradeoff. Speed mattered more than flexibility at that stage.
It didn't take long for that tradeoff to become a real limitation.
Problem
A platform that couldn't support the the shift from one-time challenges to ongoing engagement
Most of MoveSpring's early clients were running one-time, activity-based challenges for events, trade shows, and fundraisers. But shortly after launch, demand shifted.
Clients wanted flexible challenge structures that could scale from a single, simple challenge to a full, multi-feature wellness program. They wanted social features to foster connection between employees and participants. They wanted to tie in broader wellness initiatives through content, custom tracking, and in-app announcements. And they were looking for an app that provided value between company-run challenges to justify longer-term investment.
None of that was possible in the system we'd launched with. Every challenge was locked to exactly three engagement modes, and every challenge preview lived inside a fixed container. The product couldn't grow to meet what clients were actually asking for.
Foundational work: iterations while redesigning challenges and features to be intuitive, flexible, and scalable
Approach
Redesign and build a flexible foundation before adding another constrained feature
We couldn't continue adding more features to our existing structure. I wanted to create a foundation that could handle whatever came next while also providing the team with the tools and components needed to move quickly and with consistency.
I worked with the Head of Product Design to define the needs behind our existing and upcoming features. Before building anything new, I audited what we already had. I looked at existing features to identify where the UI and interaction patterns were falling short and limiting the platform. The foundational work to creating the design system was an overall redesign of our app. Our challenges had to be more intuitive, flexible, and scalable. I then translated those improvements directly into the new components and patterns.
Foundational components in the design system bring the friendly, approachable brand to life
Solution, part 1
Building the foundation
I started at the base layer: defining colors, typography, icons, and styles that would bring our brand to life for our end consumers. Then I built a library of standalone, reusable foundational components: buttons, forms, comments, charts, progress bars, avatars, labels, toggles.
Larger UI/UX patterns established to support scalability, interactions, and consistent navigation
Solution, part 2
Establishing patterns that scale
From there, I built up to larger, composite patterns used across the product: challenge cards, leaderboard cards, content cards, navigation, bottom sheets, full views, modals. I made sure every card-based component could flex and respond to whatever content it needed to hold. New challenge types, content formats, and features could be added later without needing to rebuild the system underneath them.
Modular component system supporting a variety of challenge modes and app functionality
A look at how things came together across the mobile app
Result
An infinitely flexible platform…and a team that could move at the speed the business needed
With the design system and component libraries in place, we shifted focus from layout problems to product problems. We could design new features with confidence they'd fit into a system that already worked. Engineering adopted the system in their own practice too, speeding up delivery and improving consistency across the product. MoveSpring shipped dozens of new features on top of this foundation, and I continued to adapt and evolve the system as we outgrew parts of it.
The increase in speed and flexibility didn't just benefit design. This work directly supported one of the most important shifts in the company's history: MoveSpring's move from one-time, event-based revenue to an annualized SaaS model, leading to profability within two years of that shift.
❤️
...a little customer love...
Will S.
Admin at an 1,000+ employee enterprise
Ciera G.
Admin at a mid-sized company