Curriculum vitae
John Harrison
Design Systems Lead
- Leighton Buzzard, UK (London / remote)
- john@whatwhat.design
- +44 7789 986169
- whatwhat.design
- linkedin.com/in/whatwhatjohn
Summary
I’ve spent 15+ years designing digital products, with the last six focused on design systems. My work spans financial services and consumer products. I audit what’s there, simplify it, and hand it over so teams can keep it going without me. I work with design tokens, Figma library architecture and Figma-to-code pipelines, with WCAG 2.2 AA built in from the start. I also care about the less visible work that makes a system stick: workshops, documentation, decisions and getting people aligned. More recently, that’s extended to AI assistants, with one source of truth instead of duplicated values that drift.
Experience
Operating as an independent design-systems lead through whatwhatdesign ltd since 2019. Selected engagements:
UBS (via Else)
Lead Interaction Designer
- Leading template definition for a UBS dashboard product, scoping four responsive templates (dashboard, stacks, multi-column, horizontal-scroll) covering the full range of page types.
- Authoring the template specification (page regions, spacing scale, responsive breakpoints, panel/overlay behaviour, design tokens) as the single reference shared by design and engineering.
- Building accessibility into the spec from the outset: heading hierarchy, focus management, keyboard rules for panels and menus, and target sizing.
- Restructuring the system’s guidance into a three-layer model (tokens, components, patterns), with GitHub Copilot as a design partner and a clear split between generated facts and hand-written rules, so engineers and AI assistants work from one shared contract rather than copying values that go stale. Design direction and the quality bar stay with me; Copilot speeds up delivery.
Lantern
Design System Specialist
- Led the evolution of Lantern’s design system from Lux 3.0 to 4.0: audit, token architecture, component refinement, documentation and team handover.
- Introduced a two-tier token architecture (primitive + semantic) and built a Figma to Tailwind to Zeroheight pipeline as a single source of truth across design and code.
- Created a six-token directional spacing taxonomy, since reused across projects; rewrote Zeroheight docs to be simple, human and actionable.
- Originated whatwhatdesign’s three-month design-system audit framework (Understand & Diagnose, Simplify & Streamline, Empower & Embed).
- Built AI into the workflow from the start, across the audit, the token work and the documentation, integrated rather than bolted on.
Bupa Global & Greystar (via Digitas UK)
Lead Digital Designer
- Led design-system and website work for Bupa Global (international health insurance) and Greystar (global real estate) back to back.
- For Bupa Global, designed a brand-namespaced colour-token layer so the brand could sit on shared system primitives without affecting other Bupa entities.
- For Greystar, delivered feature and content design (including a fee calculator) and refined availability-state language alongside the visual system.
T. Rowe Price (via Else)
Lead / Senior Interaction Designer
- Provided design continuity across four years and three contracts on T. Rowe Price’s enterprise design system, the deepest engagement in the portfolio.
- As Lead (2022-24), owned design tokens, usability improvements and component specs, plus stakeholder management, delivery and mentoring the designers contributing to the system.
- Established the foundations in three-week sprints with weekly cross-Atlantic (US/UK) workshops, then scaled scope, documentation and adoption.
- Ran the contribution model: an incubator route for teams to build components that graduated into the core, a fixed intake and support cadence, and major/minor/patch releases with a public changelog.
EON (via Digitas UK)
Senior Digital Designer
- Design system for the EON mobile app, plus guidelines and the billing / support sections.
The Walt Disney Company
Senior Designer
- Animation, UI and branding for brand partnerships.
John Brown Media
Senior Interaction Designer
- Led the design of a financial-education website for RBS & NatWest; designed the Waitrose Food app for iOS and Android.
- Lead designer for Manchester City FC’s ‘City Kicks’ site (including the merchandising logo); work for Chelsea FC, Virgin, Monsoon and Accessorize.
Nickelodeon UK
Digital Designer
- Sole digital designer at Nick UK: built the dedicated SpongeBob UK site (800,000+ page views, one of the most-visited parts of Nick.co.uk) and redesigned Nick Jr, growing it to ~10,000 unique users a day.
Skills
- Design systems
- audit & strategy , design tokens (primitive + semantic) , component architecture , Figma library architecture , Figma-to-code pipelines , governance & contribution models , documentation , AI-legible documentation , handover
- Accessibility
- WCAG 2.2 AA , inclusive design , accessible-by-default components
- Craft
- interaction design , UI design , prototyping , motion (Lottie, Rive, After Effects) , iconography , typography , brand
- Facilitation
- workshops , mentoring , design reviews , stakeholder playbacks , knowledge transfer , team enablement
- Tools
- Figma , Figma Dev Mode , Zeroheight , Tailwind , Storybook , Supernova , Webflow , Framer , Claude , GitHub Copilot , VS Code , Jira
Education
- MA, Sequential Design
- BA (First Class), Visual Communication
Publication
- Idle Idol: The Japanese Mascot