Bupa, Design system partnership
As part of a wider frog x Bupa design partnership, I was embedded within Bupa's Design System squad, made up of Bupa designers, a contractor, a Capgemini designer and frog designers, to enhance teamwork and boost infrastructure and product quality across Bupa's digital estate.
- Role
- Design Lead, Design System squad
- Services
- Design systems, Design leadership, Ways of working, Accessibility
- Client
- Bupa
Challenge
Design system consistency and scale: workstreams were spawning across the business, from insurance to Bupa dental care, each with their own product and design teams, tech leads and delivery leads working somewhat independently of one another.
Approach
We established ways of working, governance and collaboration models that let the Design System squad get involved from the early stage of projects and workstreams, so the roadmap and milestones could be planned alongside, not after, new work, growing the design system and Bupa's digital experience together as one unified business. The squad also ran regular comms with product and design teams to socialise what was in progress and what was coming next, and provided Figma and design support to help level up Bupa's own designers' skillsets.
Key design decisions
Foundational practice areas, accessibility, collaboration, documentation, versioning and how components get added to the system, were treated as living, co-created guiding principles, adapted and iterated as the team's shared understanding evolved, rather than fixed rules set once and left unchanged.
- 01
Improved ways of working
A shared governance model let the squad plan alongside new workstreams instead of reacting after the fact.
- 02
Closer design/dev collaboration
Design and engineering worked from the same foundations, tightening the loop between design intent and shipped components.
- 03
Stronger component optimisation
Regular review against real product usage kept the system’s components fit for how teams actually build.
- 04
Better shared ownership
Bupa designers, contractors, Capgemini and frog designers all held a stake in the system’s direction, not just its output.
Embedding the Design System squad early in projects and workstreams across the business let the system grow in step with Bupa's wider digital experience, rather than trailing behind it.
- Involved from the early stage of projects and workstreams across the business
- Regular comms with product and design teams to socialise progress and pipeline
- Figma and design support provided to help designers work more effectively and consistently
“The greatest change wasn't the screens, but how the teams collaborated.”
Outcome
Delivered improved ways of working, closer design/dev collaboration, stronger component optimisation and better shared ownership across the Bupa Design System squad and the wider product groups it partnered with. Over 18 months, that shared foundation helped the wider team ship a reimagined My Bupa app, a redesigned homepage, streamlined navigation and smart triage, with the app store rating rising to 4.4 stars, up from 1.1.
- 4.4 stars
- My Bupa app store rating, up from 1.1 stars, following the redesigned app experience with the Anatomy Design System.
- 1 documentation
- Single source of truth on Zeroheight, aligning design and engineering around one shared reference.
- 6+ business groups
- Digital groups aligned around the shared design system and its roadmap.
- 6+ product squads
- Squads across those groups drawing on the same design system foundations.
Reflection
The greatest change wasn't the screens, but how the team collaborated, closer ways of working between design, development and the wider business did more for consistency and scale than any single component ever could.