Janssen Pharmaceuticals (Johnson & Johnson)
Building Under Pressure: The 48-Hour Design System
Picture this: Wednesday afternoon, 300+ regulatory change requests land in your inbox. The FDA submission deadline? Friday morning. Welcome to my reality at Janssen Pharmaceuticals, where I led the creation of a design system that could handle the impossible—cascading hundreds of changes across 18 pharmaceutical brands in under 48 hours while maintaining FDA compliance.
The Wednesday to Friday Crisis
How I transformed an impossible 48-hour deadline into a scalable design system that saved Janssen millions
The Situation
"Wednesday afternoon, 300+ regulatory change requests land in your inbox. FDA submission deadline? Friday morning."
Crisis Hits
- • 300+ change requests received
- • 18 brands need updates
- • Legal review required
- • Adobe XD can't handle the scale
The Solution
- • Figma migration approved
- • 144-component system architected
- • Plugin workflow automated
- • Team coordination streamlined
Delivered
- • All 1,500 pages updated
- • FDA compliance maintained
- • Zero errors in submission
- • Process now repeatable
"I'll never forget watching Dr. Sarah Chen, a neurologist with 20 years of experience, spend 12 minutes hunting for dosing information. She turned to me and said, 'I have 15 minutes per patient. This interface just stole one.'"
The Perfect Storm of Complexity
Every Pixel Scrutinized
- • FDA approval for every element
- • "Fair balance" compliance rules
- • $50K cost per UI update
- • 3-6 months per brand change
18 Teams, Zero System
- • BAs bypassing UX entirely
- • No version control
- • Legal reviews post-development
- • 847 component variations
Users Suffering
- • 12-minute dosing info searches
- • 4+ browser tabs per task
- • 30% support ticket increase
- • 2.1/5 staff morale
$50M Contract at Risk
- • IBM renewal threatened
- • Pfizer gaining advantage
- • $900K annual legal costs
- • 3 dosing calculator errors
The Breaking Point
During our audit, we discovered calculation errors in 3 of the 18 dosing calculators. In pharmaceutical design, that's not just a bug—it's a potential patient safety crisis that could cost lives.
My Solution: When the Impossible Became Possible
The Figma Migration Fight
The client initially thought migrating from Adobe XD was unnecessary. I had to prove that Figma's component architecture could cascade changes across thousands of wireframes—something XD simply couldn't handle at pharmaceutical scale.
Building the Cascade System
I architected a 144-component library where a single change could update every instance across 18 brands. The key was creating a component hierarchy that legal could approve once, then reuse everywhere.
The Plugin Integration Breakthrough
Working with two junior designers, I built a custom workflow using multiple Figma plugins to compile changes and generate the compressed PDFs that legal required—turning a week-long manual process into hours.
Remote Crisis Management
Managing this complexity remotely meant constant Zoom calls with BAs, legal reviewers, and product owners. I became the translator between pharmaceutical requirements and design execution under impossible deadlines.
The Technical Innovation That Saved Us
The Cascading Component Architecture
The breakthrough was realizing that pharmaceutical copy changes followed patterns. Instead of manually updating 1,500 pages per brand, I built a component system where changing one master component would cascade across all instances.
- • 144 master components covering every pharmaceutical use case
- • Component states for 18 different brand variations
- • Responsive breakpoints built into every component
- • FDA compliance documentation embedded in component specs
The Plugin Integration Workflow
I integrated multiple Figma plugins to create an automated pipeline: changes entered once, cascaded through the system, and compiled into the compressed PDFs that legal required for FDA submission.
- • Custom PDF generation pipeline reducing manual work by 90%
- • Automated version control preventing team conflicts
- • Quality assurance checks built into the workflow
- • Real-time collaboration across remote team members
Transformation by the Numbers
User Experience Wins
Business Results
The Real Impact
Three months post-launch, Dr. Chen messaged me: "Your new design gave me 10 minutes back with each patient today. That's 30 more patients I can help each week."
We didn't just redesign 18 websites. We transformed how a Fortune 500 company approaches digital design, saved millions in operational costs, and gave time back to healthcare providers to focus on what matters most: their patients.
Transforming Skeptics into Champions
"Week 1: 'Designers don't understand compliance'
Week 8: 'This is the best documentation we've never had to write'"
"Holy sh*t, I just built a new feature page in 2 hours. Used to take me 2 weeks."
"Initially opposed standardization, fearing loss of brand identity. Became our biggest advocate after seeing the dashboard."
Leading Under Impossible Pressure
Managing Two Junior Designers
Sometimes we had less than 24 hours to implement hundreds of changes. I coordinated two junior designers across different time zones while preventing conflicts in our work.
Result: Team learned to move fast without breaking things under extreme deadlines
Remote Stakeholder Orchestra
Constant Zoom calls with BAs, legal reviewers, and product owners. I became the translator between pharmaceutical complexity and design execution.
Result: Built trust across 18 different drug brands and their workflows
Constraints as Catalysts
By week 4, I was reading FDA guidance for fun, realizing deep understanding of rules meant I could bend them creatively.
Systems > Screens
The ugliest component that works everywhere is more valuable than the prettiest one-off design.
Make Everyone a Designer
Gave legal, developers, and BAs access to our design system, transforming them from gatekeepers to co-creators.
Design System & Interface Gallery
FDA-Compliant Design System & Implementation
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