BNP Paribas
Challenge
How to boost the adoption and impact of a Design Language System?
In 2022, as the BNP Paribas and Hello Bank! applications embarked on an in-depth revamp, the Group made a strategic choice: to unify design and development around a multi-brand, multi-platform Design Language System (DLS).
Our challenge was to lay the foundations of a robust system (nomenclature, tokens, components, etc.) while accompanying a major cultural change. Because a good DLS is only as good as its adoption, we had to get all the teams involved on board, defend strong choices, and maximize concrete benefits in terms of productivity, consistency and collaboration.
BNP Paribas is Europe's leading banking group, with over 8 million customers in France.
Since 2015, we have been supporting its teams in their digital and organizational transformation: large-scale deployment of design, acculturation to user-centric approaches, continuous improvement of employee and customer journeys.
Approach
Code as the source of truth: we have centered our method on code, the only language truly shared by designers and developers, to guarantee the system's reliability, portability and maintainability.
Allowing a high degree of freedom of brand expression: the DLS was designed to allow differentiated visual expression between brands, while maintaining a shared technical and design base.
Supporting a cultural change: by collaborating on a daily basis with production squads, we brought product, tech and design teams on board around common methods: cross-review, joint specification, documentation, transverse governance.
Key solutions
Multi-brand, multi-platform DLS, compatible with SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose
A modular token structure (+4400 tokens), designed for scalability
Automated synchronization pipeline (Google Sheets → GitHub → Figma) via GitHub Actions
A custom Figma plugin, to instantly switch an interface from iOS to Android, and vice versa
A documented collaboration mode: benchmark, spec, recipe, design/dev integration, publication
Results
Time-saving in screen design
Of the team believe that DLS improves the quality of project delivery
Time-saving in developing a multi-brand view
Satisfaction among teams using the DLS
