How We built Condor DS and cut production costs 50%
Building 4Sale's design system, a product that serves products, to unify web, iOS, and Android, speed up delivery, and cut production costs in half.
TL;DR
4Sale's UI was inconsistent and slow to build on. I led design on Condor DS, a shared system of tokens and components that cut production costs in half and brought web, iOS, and Android under one roof.
Context
By 2020, 4Sale was growing fast. But every new feature meant developers rebuilding the same buttons, inputs, and layouts from scratch, and designers kept solving problems we'd already solved. Design quality depended entirely on how much dev time we had.
The problem
A UI audit and developer feedback both pointed to the same thing:
- Inconsistency. Buttons, inputs, and typography varied across pages, eroding trust.
- Slow velocity. Developers kept rebuilding the same elements from scratch.
- Fragmented UX. Web, iOS, and Android felt like three different products.
Left unsolved, that meant lost trust, wasted engineering time, and slower launches.
Approach
Before designing anything, we did the groundwork:
- Benchmarked Material Design, Carbon, and Atlassian.
- Audited our own UI to scope the inconsistency.
- Considered just patching the existing UI kit, but it wouldn't scale.
- Set four pillars to guide every decision: consistency, efficiency, scalability, collaboration.
- Got design, iOS, Android, and web aligned behind them before building.
The solution
Condor DS is built on Brad Frost's Atomic Design methodology, atoms like buttons and colour, up to full pages. It shipped as three things:
- Visual guidelines. Typography, colour, and spacing tokens.
- Component library. Reusable components for web, iOS, and Android.
- Documentation. Keeping design and engineering aligned on usage.
It didn't stop at launch. Condor runs on a defined process: research, document, handoff, UAT, publish, iterate, so it stays current as the product grows.
Impact
50%
Lower production cost
3
Platforms unified
Faster
Delivery, feature after feature
- Designers got faster testing, easier onboarding, and less repeat work.
- Developers cut UAT and code maintenance, and could focus on logic instead of UI.
- The business saw real cost savings, faster market entry, and one consistent brand experience.
Two years in, Condor is still evolving, with better documentation, a full token implementation, and a motion system underway.
“Nady played a pivotal role in leading the design system, showcasing exceptional skill in creating a cohesive and scalable framework that streamlined our processes and elevated our design standards.”
Somayia Samy
Lead product design, MaxAB, managed Mohamed at 4Sale
Reflection
Condor was never a one-time build. Two years in, it's still evolving, with better documentation, a full token implementation, and a motion system underway. The real lesson: a design system isn't finished at launch, it pays off in how well it's maintained after.