Auntie is a workplace mental health platform trusted by over 500 organisations worldwide. It offers expert-led one-to-one sessions, webinars, and practical tools to help employees strengthen their mental skills and everyday wellbeing, all provided through the employer. At its core, Auntie exists to create "healthier minds and brighter businesses" by empowering people at every level of an organisation.

Following a rebranding initiative at the end of 2022, Auntie needed to launch a refreshed digital presence across three key surfaces: a marketing website, a patient platform for end users seeking coaching and mental health guidance, and a new HR Insights platform. However, there was no unified design system in place to ensure consistency, efficiency, and scalability across these products. Each surface risked being built in isolation, which would lead to fragmented user experiences and slower development cycles, particularly challenging given the need to move quickly on the rebrand rollout.

Over the course of six months, I led the creation of Auntie's foundational design system and UI kit. We chose Vaadin as the component framework and systematically customised every needed component, from typography scales and colour tokens to interactive UI elements, building a shared library that powered the marketing website, the patient platform, and the newly created HR Insights platform. For the Insights platform specifically, which allowed HR managers to review usage frequency, ROI, and overall organisational impact, I worked in close collaboration with real HR users through co-creation activities, partnered with Auntie's customer service team to ground decisions in frontline insights, and aligned with the data product owner Niina who led the project. This collaborative, evidence-driven approach ensured the platform wasn't just visually consistent but also useful to the people relying on it.

The design system I helped establish along with Product designer colleague Kati, became the backbone of Auntie's product development, enabling a cohesive rebrand launch across the website, patient platform, and Insights platform, all sharing a single source of truth for UI components. The Insights platform, shaped directly by HR user feedback, gave customer organisations tangible visibility into the value Auntie was delivering to their employees. Beyond the immediate deliverables, the design system laid lasting foundations that allowed the team to continue evolving their UI and UX efficiently after my departure.

In just six months, the work we did at Auntie proved that a well-structured design system isn't just about visual polish, it's the connective tissue between brand, product, and the people it serves. By grounding every decision in real user collaboration and building for scalability from day one, the foundations we set continue to support Auntie's mission.