Senior Product Designer
Design Systems
Hey, I'm Karlee. I build systems others build on; infrastructure is the product. Ask me about tokens (or DIY projects).
Under construction
Rev. 26
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I'm a Senior Product Designer who builds design systems: token architectures, component libraries, and the infrastructure that lets design and engineering move as one. I own Fluent Flex Tokens at Microsoft, built from first principles to work for both designers and the AI tools now building alongside them.
I grow systems, from the people in them to the people they reach.
what i
bring
Top trait
makes ambiguity un-ambiguous
Thinker
not band-aids, long-term structural support
Bridges
without code, we're just drawing pretty things
Sequences
work so no one's blindsided down the line
There's a System Under the System (I Built It)
The modernized foundation of an AI-forward system
Design intent lives in the token name, so the system scales to new platforms, themes, and AI tools without touching component logic.
Don't Tell Anybody, These Are Evals
We built a token system we believed a model could read, then tested it. Lydia and I put it in front of Claude, ChatGPT, and Copilot with the docs stripped away, to see if the structure carried the reasoning on its own.
First, Prove the Model Could Read the Tokens
Before an AI could build a Fluent component, I had to prove a model could reason over our semantic token system on its own. The evals, the token skills, and the pressure test.
From Fork to Framework
Delivered Copilot as a token-based theme extension of Fluent, not a parallel system. Full code-to-design parity across 72 assets.
Before Anyone Touches a Component
Before the work starts, I build the infrastructure for how it gets done: audit frameworks, measurement systems, a process that holds across a distributed team.
Where It All Started
A brand color update request revealed a brittle system, so we rebuilt it with a semantic variable layer that turned hundreds of future updates into a handful.
Component + Property Naming Framework
A research-backed framework (two workshops, card sorting, pressure testing) standardized how Homebase names components and props across design and code.
Overlays and UI Regions, Oh My!
A community proposal to update the Drawer component turned into an audit of 17 design systems, and the conclusion that teams actually needed a brand new component entirely.