Smartsheet's sweeping redesign
A years-long, platform-wide redesign got its moment in the press - and I spent many quarters on the design systems team helping make it real.
What happened
In late 2024, Smartsheet rolled out a sweeping new user experience across its enterprise work-management platform. The press picked it up as a bold, modern reset:
- Smartsheet's redesign is a bold leap into AI, accessibility, and a user-centered experience → (DesignRush) - which interviews Bethany Heck, the design systems director I worked under.
- Smartsheet rolls out new user experience, adds integration with Amazon Q → (GeekWire)
A redesign at this scale isn't a single launch - it's years of work by a lot of people across design, engineering, and product, landing surface by surface.
Where I fit in
I was a design engineer on the design systems team, and I spent many quarters helping turn the new design language into shipped reality across the platform. My work spanned the full design-to-implementation stack:
- New themes - I helped rearchitect and roll out the platform's theming so the new visual language could be applied consistently across a huge, legacy surface area.
- Accessibility - I built accessibility features and utilities into the system so the redesign raised the a11y baseline rather than resetting it.
- Net-new components - I designed and built new components for the system that product teams could adopt directly.
- Product surface updates - I did the hands-on work of bringing individual product surfaces onto the new design, in direct support of team rollouts.
This is the kind of work I love: operating across the design → implementation stack, and relentlessly bringing legacy surfaces into the modern age. That's where a lot of the quiet UX value lives.
Dig deeper
I've written case studies on several pieces of this work:
- Rearchitecting Themes @ Smartsheet → - the theming system work behind the rollout.
- Loading Screen Revamp @ Smartsheet → - co-designing and fully implementing the new platform-wide loading experience.
- Focus/Keyboard Nav Utilities @ Smartsheet → - accessibility utilities built into the system.
- EZ Links @ Smartsheet → - another product surface I shipped.