CASE STUDY
Scaling an Enterprise Design System Across Fast App
Leading the adoption of True North across 13 account-opening journeys while aligning Design and Engineering around a consistent, reusable experience
Overview
Fast App had grown into a platform of 13 connected application journeys, with inconsistent patterns, duplicated design effort and increasing implementation complexity.
As Senior Design Lead, I helped migrate Fast App from its previous model to CIBC’s enterprise design system, True North. My role was to guide adoption, identify where enterprise components could be reused, define product-specific extensions where needed, and establish practices that helped teams apply the system consistently across the platform.
The Challenge
True North provided the enterprise foundation, but Fast App had complex account-opening requirements that could not always be solved by enterprise components alone.
The team needed to determine:
Which existing True North components could be adopted directly
Where Fast App needed product-specific variants or assemblies
How to document responsive behaviour, accessibility and states
How to prevent different journeys from creating conflicting solutions
How Design and Engineering would maintain one shared source of truth
Design Approach
I helped establish a clear adoption model:
1. Audit
Reviewed existing Fast App components, patterns and customer journeys to understand what already existed and where the gaps were.
2. Reuse
Mapped recurring patterns to True North and reused enterprise components whenever they met product needs.
3. Extend
Created Fast App-specific components only when product requirements couldn't be met through the enterprise system.
4. Validate & Implement
Validated high-impact or higher-risk patterns through user research before broader adoption.
5. Scale
Supported adoption through documentation, governance and team practices that helped keep future work consistent.
My Approach
Audit
Reviewed existing Fast App components, patterns and customer journeys to understand what already existed and where the gaps were.
Reuse
Mapped recurring patterns to True North and reused enterprise components whenever they met product needs.
Extend
Created Fast App-specific components only when product requirements couldn't be met through the enterprise system.
Validate & Implement
Validated high-impact or higher-risk patterns through user research before broader adoption.
Scale
Supported adoption through documentation, governance and team practices that helped keep future work consistent.
What I contributed
Guided True North adoption across 13 application flows
Helped translate enterprise components into Fast App journeys
Co-created product-specific components and reusable assemblies
Defined documentation standards and usage boundaries
Worked with Engineering through implementation and QA
Established a master Fast App file as the shared source of truth
Facilitated a weekly senior-designer forum for cross-flow decisions
Helped teams distinguish local requirements from reusable product pattern
The work created a clearer relationship between:
True North, the enterprise design system
Fast App’s product-specific component layer
The master Fast App experience file
Individual journey files
Coded implementation
This improved consistency across the 13 journeys, reduced conflicting specifications and gave Design and Engineering a more reliable foundation for future work.
The Outcome
The broader Fast App modernization contributed to:
Approximately 2 minutes faster application completion
Up to 4% improvement in conversion
54% fewer critical form errors