WestEd Template System

The design pipeline that now powers WestEd's fastest, on-brand web builds

Overview

WestEd builds a high volume of public-facing sites for state agencies, federal grantees, and educational nonprofits — each traditionally designed and built from scratch. During a funding downturn, I built the business case for a reusable design system — a Figma component library with a built-in token pipeline, paired to a WordPress Gutenberg template — and led a cross-functional team to design, build, and roll it out.

New project sites now launch at roughly 20% of the cost of a custom build, with design and development time cut in half or more. It also gave WestEd its first real mechanism for calibrated brand cohesion — tight adherence for core, signature products, deliberate flexibility further out for more distinct child brands.

Purpose & Context

The idea wasn't new — the team had agreed for years that building every site from scratch was unsustainable. A funding downturn changed the math: with less billable work in the pipeline, the cost argument for a template system was suddenly the strongest it had ever been. I built the business case, tied it to the moment, and got it funded.

Objective

Build a system flexible enough to handle WestEd's actual range of program sites — while being fast and cheap enough to beat a custom build. The hard problem wasn't visual design; it was figuring out what was genuinely repeatable versus what needed to flex.

[Figma screens: component library, theme.json/Gutenberg pairing, and the three sites across the spectrum — Disciplinary Literacy, Board of Directors, MPP]

The Results

• ~20% of the cost of a custom build
• Half or more off design and development time
• 5 projects adopted in year one, more underway
• WCAG built in at the component level, speeding up every accessibility audit since

"The WordPress template product stands out as a significant achievement — she recognized a gap in our service offerings, built stakeholder support, and created a scalable solution that directly addresses budget and timeline constraints for project teams." — Vanessa Scheirer, UX Lead & Manager

[Read the full case study →] (links to downloadable long-form write-up: full discovery process, the spheres-of-influence brand model, and reflection)