The Challenge
City Lodge is one of South Africa’s largest hotel groups, but their digital presence needed to match their physical reputation. The goal was a complete overhaul of the web experience. However, the project faced a significant hurdle: a operational disconnect between the design vision and the development implementation, leading to friction and potential inconsistencies.
The Strategic Solution
As the Lead Designer, I moved beyond just delivering high-fidelity mockups and focused on building a bridge between design, product, and engineering.
- Bridging the Gap: I initiated and facilitated recurring design workshops with both internal stakeholders and external development partners. These weren’t just “show and tell” sessions; they were alignment workshops that established a shared vocabulary and streamlined the handoff process.
- Design at Scale: To prevent future debt and ensure consistency across the group’s massive digital footprint, I built a comprehensive Design System from the ground up.
Key Deliverables & Impact
“Scalability was the priority. We didn’t just build pages; we built a system.”
- Robust Design System: I architected a library containing over 3,000 atomic elements (including variables and components). This system now serves as the single source of truth, drastically reducing design-to-dev time for future iterations.
- Complete UX Overhaul: Redesigned 40+ core pages, optimising the user journey from booking to checkout.
- Process Optimisation: Successfully aligned the design and development teams, transforming a disjointed workflow into a collaborative, agile environment