Case study ds/unify-plus · Circana

Circana: an enterprise design system

A nine-month initiative that transformed how Circana builds digital products — addressing fundamental challenges around consistency, quality, and accessibility across an enterprise analytics platform.

Circana is a global leader in consumer intelligence, providing analytics and insights that help the world's leading brands and retailers understand consumer behavior. With thousands of clients relying on its data platforms to make critical business decisions, the need for consistent, accessible, high-quality digital experiences grew increasingly urgent as the product portfolio expanded.

Role: Product Design Lead — Design Systems
Duration: 9-month initiative
Organization: Circana
Teams: Distributed global · India-based engineering

FIG 01 The Unify+ platform — one component language across planning, analysis, and recommendation surfaces.

Impact

Outcomes

50%design-to-engineering handoff time cut in half
45core components accounting for 80% of screens
AAfoundations redesigned to be WCAG AA compliant

Cross-product consistency improved measurably, raising the quality bar across the platform.

The problem

Building a scalable foundation for data-driven products

As Circana's suite of analytics applications grew, so did the fragmentation across their user interfaces.

What I observed

Each new feature or application meant reinventing solutions that had already been solved elsewhere in the organization.
UI patterns were inconsistent across applications.
Core elements were not WCAG compliant.

Unique challenges

A fast-moving analytics business

The challenge was compounded by the nature of the business. In a fast-moving analytics space where data visualization and complex interfaces are core to the product experience, teams needed a system that could adapt quickly while maintaining quality.

Need for rapid adaptation.
Complex data visualization requirements.
Distributed global teams, with engineering based in India.
Bridging geographical and knowledge gaps.

Over nine months, I led the creation and implementation of the system, working closely with engineering teams and analyst stakeholders to build a comprehensive foundation that would scale across the organization — architected with accessibility as a first-class concern, not an afterthought. That required clear standards and comprehensive training to ensure successful adoption across distributed teams.

Four views of the Marketing Foresight product in Unify+: channel mix allocation with a donut chart and efficiency index, an audience performance heat map, budget pacing and forecast with cumulative spend, and a competitive share-of-voice radar — each with an AI insights panel. — FIG 02 Marketing Foresight — the data-dense, insight-heavy surfaces the system had to serve.

scope/01
Foundations

Color, type, spacing, and interaction standards — architected to meet WCAG AA from the ground up.
scope/02
Components

45 core components covering 80% of screens, plus a purpose-built data visualization library.
scope/03
Layouts

Page-level patterns composed from the core set, built for analytics-dense screens.

Foundational architecture

Accessibility-first, analytics-ready

Accessibility-first architecture

WCAG compliance from the ground up.
Minimum AA color contrast ratios.
Keyboard navigation patterns.
Screen reader support.
Focus management.

Documentation of the neutral foreground color scale: semantic roles from Neutral Main to Neutral On Dark, each mapped to gray steps with hex and RGB values, shown against both light and dark themes. — FIG 03 Semantic neutral scale — every foreground role documented with its contrast-safe value in both themes.

Analytics-specific components

A purpose-built data visualization library:

Line graphs, bar charts, scatter plots, heat maps.
Colorblind-safe palettes.
Proper labeling and alternative representations.
Flexible, yet accessible.

A 'Ready for Dev' Figma spec for the Chart Frame component: annotated anatomy separating controllers from the chart area, alongside real usages — flighting recommendations, waterfall decomposition, weekly flighting, and impact comparison charts. — FIG 04 The Chart Frame component spec — one accessible container powering every chart type on the platform.

Data visualization components in use: a combined bar-and-line weekly flighting chart plotting spend against volume sales, a mobile report card, and an editable scenario table with weekly spend inputs. — FIG 05 Purpose-built analytics components — charts and editable data tables sharing the same foundations.

Training & enablement

Enabling teams across the globe

Comprehensive training materials.
Hands-on workshops for India-based teams.
Component composition training.
Accessibility testing practices.
Extension best practices.

Component documentation for the File Actions bar: full anatomy with numbered properties, default, hover, and clicked states, and detailed layout-and-spacing redlines for every child element. — FIG 06 Documentation built for distributed teams — anatomy, states, and spacing redlines for every component.

Impact

Transforming how the organization builds

The system transformed how Circana builds digital products — creating a foundation that balances consistency with flexibility, raises the quality bar for accessibility, and lets teams move faster while building better experiences for the analysts and business users who depend on their tools.

Establishing standards for the most-used components allowed teams to build interfaces with less oversight and greater speed to market. Design never became a bottleneck: engineering teams could create screens seamlessly. I reviewed new interfaces in a testing environment, and only when a genuinely new need surfaced did I build a new iteration of a component or dashboard.

Accomplishments

A foundation for consistency with flexibility.
Elevated accessibility standards.
Faster delivery of better experiences.
Empowered teams across the organization.

FIG 07 The system in production — scenarios, recommendations, data grids, and controls all drawing from one set of parts.

Launch story

Marketing Predictions: shipping a new product in one month

With the system in place, a brand-new product shipped in 1 month instead of 3.

With the established design system, we delivered brand-new experiences faster. Marketing Predictions borrowed the system's styles and components to create an entirely new experience for customers — shipped in one month instead of the three it would have taken without a system, and ultimately increasing revenue.