1. Overview

The Pulumi UX team lacked a formal UI library, which led to inconsistencies across the product and inefficiencies in both design and development. As Pulumi Cloud and the team grew, the need for a unified visual language became clear. A small team consisting of three senior UX/UI designers and a front-end developer came together to create Pulumi’s first UI library. The focus was on building reusable components and establishing foundational styles to support a more consistent and scalable user experience.

2. Pain Points & Opportunities

Before the UI library existed, our design and development workflows were fragmented. Designers frequently recreated components from scratch or worked from outdated files, while developers implemented UI without clear guidance or consistency. This led to duplicated work, visual drift, accessibility issues, and a fragmented user experience. We saw an opportunity not only to fix inconsistencies but to build a system that would support scalability and streamline collaboration across teams.

3. Inspiration

We drew inspiration from established systems like Google Material, Flowbite (a.k.a – Tailwind Figma), and Helios libraries. These systems demonstrated the value of a well-structured, documented, and extensible approach to UI. Their clarity and scalability helped shape our thinking around how to define tokens, components, and usage patterns in a way that would be both practical for our team and aligned with best practices.

4. Figma Library & Documentation

We built the UI library in Figma, where we created atomic components, established design tokens, and documented properties and use cases. I also contributed to writing guidelines that covered behavior, accessibility, and edge cases—ensuring our system was not only consistent but also inclusive and functional. Collaboration with our front-end developer was key: we regularly synced on implementation details, reviewed GitHub PRs, and maintained a feedback loop to keep the design and code in sync.

The design system is still a work in progress, with the long-term goal of building a public-facing website similar to Google Material’s—something that can serve as a shared resource internally and eventually externally. For now, documentation lives in a working Google Docs file titled UI Design System Guidelines, which serves as a living guide for how to create or update components within the Pulumi Cloud Console. This document is actively maintained and intended to evolve alongside the system until the full site is ready to launch.

Key Results & Metrics

• 80% reduction in time spent designing repeat UI components, thanks to reusable assets in the Figma library.

• 4× faster onboarding for new designers and developers, due to centralized documentation and clear component usage.

• 100% adoption rate among Pulumi UX designers for the new Figma component set within the first quarter.

• 20+ documented components and growing, each with usage guidelines, accessibility notes, and edge case considerations.

Methodology: Atomic Design

Creating design systems by breaking interfaces down into five hierarchical stages—atoms, molecules, organisms, templates, and pages—allowing for scalable, consistent, and modular UI development.