Vitamin Case - Kath Vizcarra

Scaling Auna's Design with Vitamin DS

From one pilot to Auna's design infrastructure.

Every team at Auna was building its own version of the same component, with no shared language between design and development.

I created and led Vitamin Design System from a single pilot product to a self-governed design system that today powers 22 products across 3 countries.

Year

2020-Present

Disciplines

User Interfaces

Design systems
Design tokens
Management
Governance
Design ops
Team leadership

We need to work faster to create Auna's new digital product interfaces.

Front-End Developer

It takes us a long time to review the screens, and with every new product, we have to do the same work all over again.

Product Designer

PROBLEM

No shared design & dev language

Every team at Auna was building its own version of the same component: 4 different visual styles, 3 tech stacks, 3 countries, with no shared language between design and development.

The result wasn't just visual inconsistency. It was duplicated work, slow releases, and constant rework.

DESIGN QUESTION

What's the fastest way to actually scale design and development

in the delivery of our digital products?

THE VISION

A multi-brand design system, without the friction

To be a multi-brand design system, with a Server-Driven UI approach, delivered through a user-centered experience.

Users

Designers, developers, marketing teams, and brand teams.

Problem to solve

Reduce redundancy, inconsistency, and excessive production costs in digital product development.

Product

Multi-brand, web (React/Angular), App (React Native), collaborative, and consistent.

Business goals

Reduce time to market, save production hours, and free up teams' time for new features.

OUR JOURNEY

How Vitamin was built in 4 phases

Tokens + Pilot

Started with Design Tokens, the smallest bet to prove value before building components. Applied to one pilot product to validate consistency without disrupting active teams.

Validated before scaling

First Components

A team of 5 devs, 3 designers, 1 motion designer shipped 10 components in React Web/Native, Angular, prioritized by usage frequency. Today: 56+ components.

10 → 56+ components

Scale & Governance

I built a distributed model: adoption levels, contribution processes, Chrome Extension for QA, Vitamin Rewards, and Vitamin Days ceremonies.

95% Adoption

Server-Driven UI

Designed and developed 22 SDUI web sections publishable from Strapi by any Product Designer (no developer needed). The biggest efficiency leap of the entire system.

5 days → 1 day to launch

How I built it?

The pilot: Validate before scaling

I started with Design Tokens, the smallest bet to prove value before building components.

I applied them to a single pilot product to validate consistency without disrupting active teams.

The pilot was Clínicas Auna 360°, Auna's first 100% digital site. If the tokens didn't work there, on one real product, there was no point asking the whole company to adopt them.

Clínicas Auna 360°: the first product built entirely with Vitamin's tokens and components.

First components: From 10 components to a library other teams started asking for

We shipped 10 components in React Web, Native, and Angular, prioritized by frequency of use.

Within a few months of launch, the library already had real traction: 10 teams using it, 23.9K insertions in a single week. It wasn't a mandate from above, teams started adopting it because it saved them work.

Early library analytics (2022): the first signal the system was actually being used.

Governance: A maturity model, not a mandate

Instead of requiring full adoption from day one, I designed a six-level ladder any team could climb at its own pace, from not using Vitamin at all to full adoption.

The six adoption levels, from 0 (not using Vitamin) to 5 (full adoption, including accessibility and motion).

The launch: From Figma to a real documentation site

With the pilot validated, we launched Vitamin's first public version: brand design tokens, 10 multi-brand core components, and a documentation site where any team could self-serve.

SHARED OWNERSHIP

The system belonged to everyone

As Vitamin matured, I moved it from a single dedicated team to a distributed model of ownership.

I designed a recognition system that turned designers and developers across 22 teams into active co-maintainers, contributing components, fixes, and documentation as part of their own work.

233%

growth in community

contributions over 3 quarters

Vitamin Rewards

A quarterly recognition program for the teams and individuals who contribute most to the system. It turned passive users into active co-maintainers.

Vitamin Days

A ceremony to share system progress, OKR results, usage analytics, and Vitamin Rewards winners.

SCALE

Everything that makes up Vitamin today

From a component library to a full ecosystem: governance tools, documentation, training, and a Server-Driven UI engine that gave development time back to the whole company.