One design system, fewer words

14 Sep 2026 v1.5.0 New

Every screen was rebuilt on one scale and one set of parts: one heading per page, cards on shared edges, explanations behind one disclosure, and a single foot line carrying the page's sources and its one caveat. The card page went from 140 words to 99 without losing a caveat; the account panel from 258 to 83.

One type scale, one spacing scale, one set of icons; 138 emoji and text glyphs replaced.
Contrast proven in all 103 palettes: no text pair below the accessibility floor.
Every caveat kept: moved into a disclosure, onto its number as a tip, or into the page foot. Never deleted.
The plans matrix readable on a phone; the sets list collapses by series.
The account panel, the collection, the watchlist, the trade evaluator and FlipFinder on the same parts.

The brief was one sentence: there is a difference between a one-time pop up and text that permanently lives on a page. The audit behind it found an app that had grown its own dialect. 58 font sizes. 124 padding values. 14 corner radii where one was meant. 39 pill styles. 78 kinds of note. Emoji standing in for icons in 30 places. The same heuristic disclaimer printed four times on one card page. And 432 words in the account panel of a Free member.

The rules are short. Numbers first, words second: a surface shows values, labels and one verdict; how and why live one click away. Explain once: what a view is for is a notice you see once per account and can always find again, never permanent text. Reachable, not in your face: every caveat stays, collapsed in a disclosure, welded to its number, or as the page's one foot line, and a line that discloses something withheld from you is never cut. One heading per page. One caveat line per page. One dialog at a time. No decoration: bold and colour carry meaning or they are not used.

In practice: one file where every raw value lives, a set of parts every screen is built from, one icon set, and a counter that measures the words a surface shows without a click and fails the build when a page grows past its budget. The card page went from 140 words to 99 in Market and 188 to 137 in Seller; the account panel from 258 to 83; the collection from 113 to 40; the plans page from 472 words of prose to 200. Contrast stopped being a hope: every text colour was computed against every surface colour in all 103 themes, 2,885 pairs, none below the accessibility floor.

What it did not do is delete a caveat. Two came out of hiding: the collection's and the trade evaluator's disclaimers had been buried in disclosures and now sit in plain view in their page feet. The next day's walk-through moved three more things (a table is as tall as it is at every width; the landing has no foot line; watch rows got their spacing back), which is 1.5.1.