SAGESURE DESIGN SYSTEM INTERNSHIP

Building Infra to speed up Design System workflows by 4x

INTERNSHIP ROLES

Design Engineering

Design Systems Designer

DURATION

June - Aug 2025 (10 weeks)

SKILLS

UI/UX
User Research
Software Development

TOOL

Cursor, Figma, Storybook, Zeroheight

TEAM MEMBERS & ROLES

Bao To, Intern

Rachael Greene, Principal Designer

Ben Bailes, AVP of Design

PROJECT 1

An AI-powered Figma Copilot Plugin to solve Design System handoffs

Time: 2 weeks

Tools: Cursor, Figma Plugins API, Claude Code

Why do we need it?

  • Team was going to get a UX Content person, but company took that away

  • Design Team is growing: 10 Designer : 1 Design System Designer

  • Business doesn't want support people - they want Designers —> DesignOps is underresourced

How does this solve the problem?

A plugin running directly inside Figma would give:

  • Designers access to up-to-date info on components' info and usage by pulling directly from the documentation codebase

  • UX Content & WCAG Contrast Linter directly within the Figma platform

  • Sync Design System Tokens & Components within all the different platforms (Storybook, Codebase, Figma, Zeroheight)

—> Gives designers easier access, and reduce design systems backlog substantially

How was this made?

I read the documentation of Figma Rest API + Plugins API, and used Cursor, Context7 + Figma MCP, React, Gemini & OpenAI APIs, and other web dev tools to take full advantage of what the platform offers.


Features:
1. AI Chat + Grounded Search through Gemini/OpenAI
2. UX Content Linter
3. Design System Sync
4. File-level WCAG Contrast Checker
5. Storybook MDX + codebase access through npm package

Try the Public Version: Figma Copilot

PROJECT 2

Building "Zeroheight" straight inside Storybook codebase for Design System Documentation

Time: 2.5 weeks

Tools: Cursor, Claude Code, Figma REST API, Storybook, Zeroheight

Why do we need it?

Zeroheight charges our design team ~18k/year for their plan with no API access & Analytics

We needed to maintain design system documentation in 3 places - Figma, Zeroheight, Storybook —> huge time cost for a small design system team.

What if you can just have all the documentation in a codebase that deploys to Storybook?

What I did

  • Built live Figma Frame syncing integration into Storybook (which is not supported by default)

  • Designed migration workflow to migrate all docs on Zeroheight to Storybook with AI agents using playwright MCP & Claude

  • Prepared Markdown Templates for easily inserting content blocks (like Notion or Zeroheight)

—> Empowers Design System Designers to own & manage all documentation of the components

Why is this cool?

I built a Figma Frame Sync Integration into Storybook that directly syncs content from Figma Frames once we click on the sync button or trigger build on the GitLab's CI/CD pipeline, automatically updating the live Figma Frames on Storybook Site

—> removes Zeroheight from the stack

—> $0 maintenance fee for design system documentation!

Result:
1. Removes Zeroheight from tech stack (saving money)
2. Allows 1 Design System Designer to own all documentation
3. One platform-agnostic source of truth for all design system info (for both design & code) all in one codebase.

—> AI-native, cost-efficient, low-maintenance design system

HACK DAY

Presenting on Vibecoding for Prototyping to the company :)

Audience: Design & Engineering Team

Tools demoed: Cursor, Lovable, Bolt, Figma Make

Main Points:
1. 4 Levels of Usage of AI in Design

2. Which tool to use within the AI prototyping spectrum (Figma - Figma Make - Lovable - Cursor)

3. Prototyping vs. Production-level code

4. Vibecoding with a Design System mindset

See my slides!

TAKEAWAYS

  1. Designing goes beyond how it looks - designing new workflows and integrating new tech into the infrastructure will help designers and engineers in the long run.

  1. AI integration into existing company workflows requires careful, thoughtful consideration and communication between designers & engineers - there is a bar for quality that still needs to be passed despite AI tools speeding up the process.

  1. Design System = System Design. Building in DesignOps is very different from building customer-facing software

And I learned so much new stuff everyday, through asking for support & help from other designers, engineers, and managers!