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Technical Design Direction · UX/UI · Design Systems · Responsive Design
In 2023, Stan needed a substantial overhaul of its web experience, from acquisition and marketing through to account creation and payment. The existing platform had accumulated years of design debt, with fragmented patterns, limited documentation and no clearly defined system to guide future development.
Working as Technical Design Director at Apparent, I led the project from discovery and user journey mapping through to UX/UI design, system development and engineering handover. The challenge was to rethink the experience while working within a limited budget and constrained development resources.
Before designing the new experience, we needed to understand what was already there: what could be retained, what needed refinement and what had to be rebuilt.
Working with a small team, I helped translate discovery, user testing and wireframing into a cohesive direction for the platform. This included redesigning existing pages and developing new journeys, while identifying the gaps between our proposed designs and Stan’s existing component library.
The solution was a deliberately modular system. Rather than creating a new component for every individual use case, we developed a leaner set of versatile components capable of supporting multiple layouts and content requirements. Each had to accommodate the proposed designs without leaving obvious inconsistencies with the legacy modules that would remain in place during the gradual rollout.
The result was a system designed not just for the new experience, but for the practical realities of implementing it incrementally.
The existing platform also relied on an approach to responsive design that had fallen behind more contemporary techniques.
I introduced a more fluid, modern framework, using responsive principles and CSS techniques such as clamp() to create layouts that adapted more naturally across screen sizes. The emphasis was on making responsive behaviour part of the underlying design system, rather than relying on a collection of fixed adjustments for individual devices.
I built interactive prototypes that demonstrated how the components behaved as their available space changed. These proved particularly effective during the initial pitch, helping make the proposed approach tangible before the project began.
The work established a more coherent foundation for Stan’s web experience, connecting redesigned user journeys with a modular component system that could be implemented progressively alongside the existing platform.
Following a subsequent visual identity and marketing update, the core desktop architecture and user journeys developed through our work remain in production as of 2026. That continuity demonstrates the value of addressing the underlying system, rather than treating the project as a visual refresh alone.
The aim was never simply to make the website look more consistent. It was to give Stan a more adaptable foundation for its evolving product, without requiring every part of the platform to be rebuilt at once.