GrooverUI
I built and led GrooverUI from audit to adoption — creating a shared system used by designers and engineers to ship faster and more consistently.
How it is now.
A shared, token-based design system spanning web and mobile — 20+ components, Storybook documentation, and semantic color tokens powering every surface. The system is the foundation every feature now ships from.
How it was then.
When I joined Groover in Q3 2023, a design system had already been attempted — and largely abandoned. The existing setup had major gaps in accessibility, no coherent values architecture, and no real engineering buy-in. Components were inconsistent across surfaces, and every new feature required starting from scratch.
Want to dive into the details?
The many UI iterations we tested around previewing content
We explored over a dozen layout variations for how artists preview campaign submissions — from inline expanders to modal overlays to split-pane views. Each was prototyped at full fidelity and tested with 5–8 curators before settling on the current card-stack pattern.
The rounds of user research that we did
Three rounds of moderated research across curators and artists — discovery interviews, concept testing, and usability validation. Key insight: curators needed to triage fast, artists needed clear feedback. Both shaped the component API and interaction patterns.
We built an AI prototype with actual data
To validate the recommendation engine UX, we built a working prototype connected to real Groover submission data. This let us test how curators responded to AI-suggested matches before committing to production implementation.