Brooks was using three tools to manage our design library: Sketch, Zeplin, and Frontify. In late 2022, the UX team introduced a plan to consolidate all 3 of those tools into one tool: Figma.
The first phase of the project was completed in summer of 2023, and consisted of unifying the design workflows and development hand off into Figma. This allowed us to sunset Sketch and Zeplin.
The second phase of the project started last fall with the content migration out of Frontify and into the Brooks Running dot com library file in Figma. Once that was well underway, the UX Team kicked off a cross-funtional working group in January of 2025 to gather perspectives and use cases from power users across the digital part of the buisness.
Through this working group, the objectives to sunset Frontify were formed.
Problem Statement: At Brooks, the design library and documentation were fragmented and outdated, with no clear ownership. Teams across eCommerce, Digital Products, and Marketing relied on inconsistent sources across Frontify and Figma, leading to confusion and inefficiency. The UX team was left to manage and sync these tools by default, creating frustration and an unsustainable workflow for all teams.
We needed to unify our tools and establish a single source of truth.
Objectives:
Create a single source of truth for UI design and documentation
Make workflows more straightforward and efficient; design at scale
Ensure consistent visual language and component guidelines across teams
Establish ownership and governance process for ongoing maintenance
Ease onboarding and education for vendors and new hires
Process: In January, the UX team kicked off a cross-functional working group with other power users: Digital Design (Creative), Site Publishing (eCommerce), Digital Merchandising (eCommerce) and User Experience (Digital Products).
Purpose: power users will represent different teams' points of view, ensuring that all use cases are covered, and all needs addressed optimally as we look to sunset Frontify.
Cadence:
Monthly meetings H1 2025
Bi-Monthly meetings H2 2025
Quarterly TBs 2026+
Beyond content migration out of Frontify and into Figma, we weren’t exactly sure what would be required to sunset the tool.
So we started with a workshop to understand the use cases, benefits, and pain points of each system.
We concluded the workshop by asking each attendee what the most important thing was to them. Asking this question helped our internal users feel understood and helped me rank the themed needs accordingly.
We came up with 5 themes to address over the following meeting instances:
Organization
Video
Ownership
Archive
Integrations
Over the next three months, the team migrated and reorganized design documentation into Figma, tailoring it to the needs of key user groups.
A major breakthrough was the creation of a “module matrix” — a central guide and link hub for the library — developed collaboratively by Erin (UX Team) and Brendan (Site Publishing Team).
The team also established a video specs strategy and implemented a governance process using a form-to-Jira intake system.
By April, the team had made enough progress to solidify the rollout plan, setting June 30, 2025, as the sunset date for Frontify. Meaning that we will have one consolidated tool for our design library and documentation starting July 1, 2025 and complete a more than 2 year process of consolidating our design stack, improving our teams efficiency, and working better processes across teams including development vendors.
My Role: I bring a DesignOps lens to my role as UX Manager, focusing on how to support individuals, processes, and tools to impact design at scale. This project was an excellent opportunity for me to flex and strengthen my DesignOps muscle as I led, organized, administrated the working group from communication, scheduling, training, and coordinating action items across participants in order to get us across the finish line. My personal key takeaway from this project is that sometimes people just want to be told what to do. There is a time for consensus building and there is also a time for presenting a strong perspective and asking for folks to support.