Google Search

Building the Google Search Design System: Unifying Experiences and Boosting User Love at Scale

Launched in Q4 2021, the Search Design System became the single source of truth for designing, building, and launching coherent experiences across web and native apps. Driven by continued adoption increases in 2023 to 96.8% on Mobile Search and 85.8% on Desktop in 2024, the system significantly improved user sentiment and enabled new strategic experiences like AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Visit

google.com

Role

Design System Lead

Date

2020 – Present

Highlights

As Design System Lead for Google Search, I pushed for a seamless end-to-end journey for teams adopting the system—championing both strategy and processes for tooling and content.

I created and scaled the design guidelines program, recruiting and mentoring a team of writers and visual designers to author design guidelines for styles and 40+ reusable components and prefabs.

Building on that foundation, I initiated and led the effort to structure our design data in an LLM-friendly format, paving the way for generative UI capabilities across AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Design Guidelines Program

I fostered a fast-paced, delivery-focused culture within my team, scaling the program into a core resource used by 6,500+ yearly active designers and developers.

I influenced leadership to fund a dedicated research initiative focused on design guidelines and Figma library usage. The insights revealed key gaps in content and components, which I translated into targeted improvements—driving a 14% CSAT increase in 2024 and reinforcing the program’s user-centered impact.

Enabling Generative UI with Gemini 3.0

I defined the architectural strategy for Generative UI, removing critical blockers to enable the team to deliver the dynamic visual layouts and interactive tools now live in AI Mode.

I established the prompt engineering framework that synthesized our system’s styles with user intent, providing the blueprint for the team’s execution. By driving technical alignment on canonical queries and rendering standards with engineering partners, I empowered the team to prove our design system could scale to generate bespoke, in-brand interfaces in real-time.

For hand-off, prior to Figma launching DevMode, I also designed a custom tool that exported designs directly from Figma, allowing engineers to easily inspect designs without having to use Figma.

Together, these key tools, were specifically designed to make it significantly easier for teams to design and build cohesive UI that adheres to the design system's guidelines and components, thereby driving the adoption of new, more efficient practices across the organization.