TIAA: Ethos Design System
TIAA's first enterprise-wide design system emerged to create more consistency, efficiency, and a unified user experience across the company's product suite. The newly implemented system was able to yield the following noteworthy results:
Ethos cut design-to-dev time by 30%
Account Homepage received a Gold Medal from Corporate Insight, Retirement Plan Monitor
Public homepage saw enrollment starts surge by 80%
Overall content engagement rate vaulted +40%
The bounce rate fell significantly by 41%
Advice session starts grew by 94% with financial consultants from the Lifetime Income educational experience
SEO rank skyrocketed by 76%
Services: Creative Direction, UX Design, UI Design, Branding
The Task at Hand
Over the years, TIAA's customer experience and digital identity across products and platforms had become fragmented. There were essentially 18 different design systems in use, leading to slower collaboration, inconsistent workflows, and a lack of brand recognition at scale. We needed to create one global system not only to increase dev and design efficiency, but to unify the enterprise experience.
The Challenges
Siloed product teams with very different ways of working
Multiple rebrand initiatives in the past with inconsistent implementation
An impending rebrand starting in the near future
Past teams defaulting to custom work to meet urgent, 'fast track' requests
No rigor or process to understand how to make a meaningful change to the different systems
No unified team leading design and experience strategy
Understanding the vastly different system needs of our B2C and B2B channels
The Solution: Part 1
We built an intuitive, scalable, and accessible design system to ensure integrity across all our touch points, inspiring a cohesive digital experience through a single source of truth. I played a key role in unifying our cross functional teams – design, marketing, product, accessibility and developers through the implementation of the design system and new work process.
As the Visual Design Lead, I worked on component exploration, defining our foundations, envisioning our documentation, and mentoring design teams through adoption. I also collaborated with the marketing team and brand agencies to help adjust parts of the new brand direction to better align with the needs of the design system.
The Solution: Part 2
Ethos’ documentation was very component centric by nature. Post launch, I noticed most teams were looking for more direction on patterns, templates, and overall experience layout.
In order to fill this gap, I co-created the Experience Direction (XD) Team. We focused on defining a better vision for the system and how it could come to life across the enterprise.
Through design reviews, pattern governance, and the creation of new Experience Outcomes, we were able to gain alignment across channels and empowered teams to build more cohesive products.
The Results
The design system not only streamlined workflows but also strengthened team dynamics. By centralizing reusable components, it minimized redundancy, accelerated production, and enhanced brand consistency across our product platforms.
More than just improving efficiency, the system delivered measurable outcomes. Optimized patterns led to increased engagement, better SEO performance, and reduced bounce rates. Development teams experienced smoother transitions, quicker implementations, and heightened execution efficiency.
By integrating design, content, and development, the system established a solid foundation for scalable, high-impact results.
