Legacy Builds & Design Systems
The Challenge: Legacy System in a Rusted Shell
Imagine a car that’s been touched by dozens of hands over 60 years. No manuals, just a mess of wiring, mismatched parts, and decisions made long ago for reasons I’ll never fully know. That’s what I inherited and it’s not unlike an outdated design system with legacy code, inconsistent patterns, and patchwork fixes.
The Approach: System Audit
I start every build by defining a clear end goal. What should this experience feel like when it’s done? Then I audit each subsystem. This mirrors how I approach UX audits: identifying what scales, what breaks, and what needs a complete redesign.
• Which parts still function?
• What’s been hacked together?
• Which systems are interdependent (fuel & ignition, electrical & accessories)?
The Roadmap: Rebuilding with Intention
From there, it’s staged planning. I prioritize critical systems like electrical, fuel, braking and map them with clarity and documenting every wire, bolt, and connection. My goal isn’t just to make it work it’s to make it maintainable and understandable for anyone down the road.
That’s the same mindset I bring to digital systems: thoughtful architecture, scalable components, and future-friendly design.
The Front End Experience Layer: Paint, Interior, Performance
Once the foundation is strong, I turn to the visible layers. Paint, upholstery, trim, audio. These are your UI, your brand moments, your interactions. They're what most people notice first. But without the work underneath, they’re just chrome on a broken chassis.
1964 RAMBLER AMBASSADOR 990 - THE BEGINNING
The Result: A Cohesive, Human-Centered Machine
Every restored car I build is more than the sum of its parts it’s a system designed to perform beautifully, reliably, and with character. That’s my approach to UX, too. Whether it’s an app or an engine, I’m always thinking about the whole machine.
I approach restoring a classic car a lot like auditing a legacy design system or inherited codebase.
You’re not starting from scratch you’re working with decades of decisions, shortcuts, and undocumented changes. There are parts that still technically ‘work,’ but don’t make sense anymore. So the first thing I do is define a clear vision for what the system should be whether that's the final user experience or the way I want the car to perform.
From there, I run a full audit. I look at what's still functional, what's been hacked together, and which systems are dependent on each other like you would mapping design tokens across themes, or untangling global styles from component overrides.
And just like in a product environment, sometimes it’s cleaner and more scalable to rip something out like the old wiring harness and rebuild it with clarity. Documenting every connection, mapping interdependencies, and building it so the next person can understand it just as clearly as I do today.
To me, whether it's Figma components or fuel systems, it's all about building thoughtful systems that last.
