Design system for mobile.

Three squads, one app

Alpian is Switzerland's first digital private bank. As the product grew, design split across three squads: everyday banking, investments and advisory. Each squad shipped fast, and each one solved the same problems in its own way.

The result was an app that felt like three apps. My brief was to lead the creation of a design system that every squad would actually want to use, without slowing any of them down.

Research before pixels

Before designing a single component, I wanted to know how people would really use the system. I interviewed every designer and mobile developer, audited the live app screen by screen, and compared how mature systems like Material and Apple's Human Interface Guidelines handle the same problems.

Atom by atom

That quote shaped the structure. We organised the system with atomic design, so every piece has one clear place and a clear reason to exist. Small parts combine into bigger ones, and a change to an atom flows up through everything built on it.

We defined the atoms first and agreed on them together, then built up level by level. Nothing moved to the next level until the one below it was stable.

Dark by default

Alpian's brand is dark and quiet, closer to a private banker's office than a fintech dashboard. We designed dark mode first and treated it as the main theme, not an afterthought. That meant extra care with contrast, elevation and how charts read on a black background.

Tokens connect it all. A single name, like surface-raised, resolves to the right value for each theme and each platform, so iOS and Android stay in sync without anyone copying hex codes.

Built by six designers

I didn't want a system designed by one person and handed to everyone else. Each designer owned part of it, usually the components their squad relied on most. My job was to set the direction, keep decisions consistent and make sure the work moved forward.

Every new component or change followed the same path:

Charts and character

A private bank lives on numbers, so data visualisation became part of the system: line charts, progress bars and allocation views, all with rules for how they behave on small screens and in the dark.

We also built a library of 3D illustrations for empty states and feature highlights. They give the app warmth without competing with the content.

From three apps to one

The system now holds hundreds of components and is the starting point for every new feature at Alpian. Squads still move fast, but now they move in the same direction.

What I'd do again

Starting with research. The interviews told us what the team needed, and they gave every designer a reason to care about the system before it existed. It never felt like my system: it was ours.