Helping Gap Inc. deliver a cohesive cross-brand shopping experience through a scalable, unified design system.
Our team built together the foundational design system for Gap Inc.’s multi-branded e-commerce platform, enabling consistent experiences across four distinct brands — Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta.
Impact
Case
The Challenge
Key pain points
Analytics and design reviews showed recurring usability gaps across the four brand sites, confirming the need for a unified yet flexible foundation.
My Role
Design Audit
The audit uncovered extensive redundancy across the ecosystem — over 200 components performing identical functions, inconsistent interaction patterns, divergent visual and token systems, and accessibility gaps that varied by brand. These inconsistencies created user friction, slowed design and development, and made cross-brand scalability difficult. The findings provided clear evidence that a unified, token-driven system was essential for improving quality and efficiency across all four brands.
The audit delivered a clear blueprint for unifying the brands: it exposed consolidation opportunities, aligned stakeholders around a shared design language, and established the foundation for a scalable design system. By quantifying redundancies and documenting gaps, the audit justified investment, accelerated decision-making, and enabled a 40% faster design-to-development handoff and a 60% reduction in redundant components. It became the strategic anchor that guided every component, token, and accessibility decision moving forward.
Research
The audit delivered a clear blueprint for unifying the brands: it exposed consolidation opportunities, aligned stakeholders around a shared design language, and established the foundation for a scalable design system.
The audit delivered a clear blueprint for unifying the brands: it exposed consolidation opportunities, aligned stakeholders around a shared design language, and established the foundation for a scalable design system.
A/B Testing
The audit delivered a clear blueprint for unifying the brands: it exposed consolidation opportunities, aligned stakeholders around a shared design language, and established the foundation for a scalable design system.
Component Build
Ensuring that the design system can scale as new features or products are introduced while maintaining flexibility to adapt to evolving market trends and user preferences.
A/B Testing for Iterative Design
Ensuring that the design system can scale as new features or products are introduced while maintaining flexibility to adapt to evolving market trends and user preferences.
Solution
Visual suggestion: Grid or carousel showing the same components styled for each brand (e.g., Add-to-Bag buttons or PDP image galleries across Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Athleta).
Learnings
Learnings Text
Outcomes
The unified design system reduced design and development inefficiencies while enhancing cross-brand cohesion.
Measured outcomes:
“The system empowered brand teams to move faster, stay consistent, and focus on user experience instead of re-creating UI elements.”
The foundation now serves as the backbone for all new Gap Inc. digital experiences.
Planned evolution:
“Next, we aim to scale beyond consistency — towards intelligent, adaptive design systems that respond to user context and brand storytelling.”