CLIENT
Discover Financial Services
ROLL
UX Design / Creative Direction
TOOLS
Figma / After Effects
Overview
When Discover introduced a new brand-wide design system, we used the moment to unify a fragmented digital ecosystem that had grown in silos across Card and Banking products. Teams operated with separate components, development workflows, and interpretations of brand standards, resulting in inconsistent customer experiences across the platform.
Radiant became Discover’s first shared digital design system—establishing a single source of truth that replaced legacy complexity with a scalable, cohesive foundation adopted and admired across the organization.
The Challenge
Discover’s digital products had evolved independently over time, leaving teams without a modern, shared framework for designing and building consistent experiences. While brand guidelines existed, they were not deeply integrated into product design, and there was little standardization across components, interaction patterns, or accessibility practices.
The challenge was twofold. First, Discover needed to rapidly modernize its digital design approach—moving toward component-driven, scalable systems that aligned with contemporary design and development workflows. Second, this modernization needed to happen efficiently across a large, complex organization without slowing product teams or creating additional friction.
This required rigorous logic and documentation for every component: defining states, behaviors, usage guidelines, and implementation details across the entire ecosystem. In parallel, the system needed to meet and exceed ADA accessibility standards—an effort that involved extensive education, collaboration, and pressure-testing to ensure every customer could navigate Discover’s digital products with confidence and ease.
The Ask
Our team was tasked with creating a unified design system that could scale across all Discover digital products—from Card to Banking to Loans—while remaining intuitive for both designers and developers to adopt.
Radiant needed to serve as a true bridge between design and engineering. This meant ensuring seamless handoff, clear implementation guidance, and reusable components that could be consistently applied regardless of product line or technical stack. The system had to reduce ambiguity, accelerate development, and empower teams to build accessible, on-brand experiences without reinventing solutions or introducing inconsistency.
The Result
Radiant launched as Discover’s first comprehensive digital design system, providing a shared foundation for building cohesive, scalable experiences across the organization.
The system integrated directly with Discover’s brand guidelines, translating brand principles into flexible, production-ready components that could adapt across products while maintaining a consistent visual and interaction language.
ADA Compliance
Radiant established accessibility as a core requirement—not an afterthought—with components designed and tested to meet WCAG AA-compliant design standards and deliver inclusive experiences for all users.
Documentation
Each component was supported by detailed documentation outlining usage guidelines, states, behaviors, and implementation considerations. This level of clarity significantly improved design–developer handoff, reduced rework, and enabled teams across Card, Banking, and Loans to move faster with greater confidence.
Motion Guidance
Wanting to keep the experience unique, we ultimately defined how components behave and respond through microanimations across the Radiant Design System. We documented timing, easing, state changes, and interactivity for each component, using prototype animations, detailed guidance, and CSS examples to ensure consistent, accessible implementation across all Discover products.
50%
Reduction in production & design costs
$7.5 M
Gains from efficiency
2X
Speed to market
Radiant ultimately transformed how Discover designs and builds digital products—replacing fragmentation with alignment, and setting a new standard for quality, accessibility, and consistency across the entire ecosystem.
