Case Study · Questrade
Allspark Design System: content
I led content design's role in transforming Questrade's Allspark from a fragmented component library into a governed enterprise design system. I set the content vision, the MVP guidelines, and a roadmap the team could run without me.
Role
Principal Content Designer
Timeline
6 months
Team
Senior UX Manager, UX Manager (Design Systems), Content Design Team Lead, content design team
Allspark's transformation results. The content system I led was one part of it.
Allspark: content design integrated into the enterprise design system
Background
Questrade is a leading Canadian online brokerage offering self-directed investing products across web, mobile, and desktop. Its Allspark design system was maturing from a component library into a full enterprise design system.
The design system team was focused on building components, but had no centralized content design guidelines, which led to inconsistent UX writing and friction between teams. I identified that gap, proposed a solution, and earned senior leadership's approval to lead the project.
Challenge
Questrade's content design guidelines were scattered, not centralized. The result was inconsistent product experiences and inefficient collaboration between teams. The goal was to create one unified content design system that improved consistency, streamlined the process, and helped teams work more efficiently.
Success meant four things:
·Define the system: establish the MVP guidelines and a process for maintaining them.
·Clarify ownership: assign clear responsibilities across content, design, and engineering.
·Create alignment: secure buy-in across teams and senior leadership for the roadmap.
·Improve consistency: centralize guidelines to make products more consistent and workflows faster.
Research and investigation
Defining the audience
With the UX Manager, I identified three groups the system had to serve: content designers, the primary users and contributors; UX designers, who align design with content; and the broader organization, anyone whose work touches content design.
Benchmarking and surveys
I surveyed the content design team, UX managers, and product managers to benchmark the cost of having no system. On average, each project ran into:
content design changes per project
daily cross-team messages about content rules
Those numbers gave the project a clear target: cut the rework and the constant back-and-forth.
Internal audit
I audited the existing guidance, style guides, UX writing documentation, glossaries, and brand guidelines, to see what was still relevant, what needed updating, and what had to be consolidated into one central system.
Competitive analysis
I studied how top-tier design systems like Material Design and Polaris document and structure content, noting the patterns and best practices worth adopting, so Questrade's system could be both scalable and tailored to its own needs.
My approach
Defining the content guidelines
I mapped seven guidelines the system would need: writing guidelines, a terminology glossary, component guidelines, design patterns, design principles, brand guidelines, and product principles. Some would live inside the design system; others would inform it from the outside.
For each one I defined what it is, what it includes, who leads it, and who uses it, so ownership was clear before any writing began.
Vision and strategy
With the Senior UX Manager and the Content Design Team Lead, I defined the system's purpose, scalability and consistency across products; its structure, a clear framework for organizing and maintaining the guidelines; and its roadmap, short- and long-term milestones to get there.
Stakeholder presentations
To secure buy-in, I tailored five presentations to the groups that mattered: UX leadership, the content design team, the design system team, product and engineering, and marketing and customer experience. After each one I folded the feedback back into the strategy, so alignment built with every conversation.
Prioritising the MVP
With the UX Manager for Design Systems and the Content Design Team Lead, I prioritized the guidelines by effort and impact and scoped the MVP to three: writing guidelines, the terminology glossary, and component guidelines with design patterns.
Handoff: a process the team could run
I worked with team leads and individual contributors to build a detailed completion process for each MVP guideline, so the work could scale beyond me:
·Writing guidelines: a full audit of existing guidance, templates, and a review process with UX and Marketing.
·Terminology glossary: a template, guidelines, and a review process for UX and Marketing.
·Component and design-pattern guidelines: mapped component principles and logic, templates, and a collaboration process between content design and the design system team.
Outcome and impact
The project set the foundation for content design at Questrade: a vision, a prioritized MVP, and a process the team could run without me.
·A delivery roadmap: MVP guidelines, templates, and a process for 10 content designers to complete the work by Q1 2025.
·One source of truth: writing guidance consolidated from scattered docs into a single home.
·Full alignment: buy-in across leadership and every cross-functional team.
·Less confusion: clearer collaboration across content, UX, marketing, and customer experience.
The Allspark transformation it fed into shipped components 60% faster, cut Jira error tickets in half, and reduced component revisions threefold. The content system I built set its own target on top of that: a 20% cut in content-related design changes and 25% less cross-team back-and-forth as the MVP rolled out.
Reflections and learnings
With no dedicated product manager on the project, I owned both the strategy and the execution: setting the vision, then driving it through every team. That stretched my range and made me a sharper systems leader, comfortable holding the direction and the delivery at once.
Cross-functional change runs on trust. The work moved because I kept communication transparent and adapted the same vision to what each team, content, UX, engineering, marketing, and CX, actually needed to hear. Alignment was the deliverable as much as the guidelines were.
A design system is never finished. It needs clear ownership and ongoing iteration to stay relevant as the business changes, which is exactly why I shipped a governance model and a roadmap, not just a set of guidelines.
Kyle's systemic solutions empowered our design teams to deliver high-quality work while meeting business deadlines. His contributions have set a new standard for content design at Questrade.
Dan, Sr. UX Manager, Design Systems, Questrade