How I led a holistic redesign of the foundations of key Marketplace pages - doctor and clinic profiles, to reduce design dept by 83%, improve implementation time for future changes and prepare service for new design system.
As Austin Knight defines it, design debt is the buildup of user-facing inconsistencies that undermine the experience. At Docplanner, rapid growth and multiple teams led to fragmented designs—especially on key system pages like doctor and clinic profiles. What should’ve been a unified layout evolved into nearly ten divergent versions, shaped by years of experiments and market-specific needs. The result: a "Frankenstein's monster" marked by:
I led an initiative to tackle fragmented design and code. The goal: deliver a scalable, consistent experience across customer types, plans, flows, and markets—while simplifying future work and improving UX.
To measure success, I targeted an 80% reduction in design debt, which stood at 2534 (per David Politi’s method) before the project began.
I led a five-stage effort with cross-team collaboration:
After a few months of focused work, we implemented nearly all Quick Wins. Design debt dropped by 83%—from 2534 to 438—improving consistency, scalability, and UX. The outcomes now serve as a guidelines book, accelerating experiments and aligning teams.
