How Uniphore Streamlined its Product Suite with Enterprise DesignOps
- Neuron
- Mar 21
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 18
Learn how Neuron partnered with Uniphore to unify their product suite and refine their DesignOps process.
At Neuron, our most gratifying work emerges from long-term partnerships where we get the chance to see already impressive enterprise products evolve into industry-leading offerings. Our three-year collaboration with Palo Alto-based Uniphore, an Enterprise AI leader, perfectly illustrates the kind of results this philosophy can produce.
One of the key elements of Uniphore’s platform is its suite of Customer Experience solutions, which comprises customer support solutions, digital assistants, and data capture technology. This presented an exciting challenge: unifying design across such a diverse product suite to ensure customers have the best experience. Daniel Spirn was onboarded in 2023 as Director of Product Design and Conversational AI at Uniphore to do just that.
As a leader in the Enterprise AI space, Uniphore has long been a champion of build, buy, or partner to ensure it delivers the most comprehensive and innovative solution for the market. Early in 2023, the acquisition of Red Box presented an optimal time for putting together a new design system. With the clock ticking on fast-approaching product updates, Neuron worked with Daniel Spirn to perform an expedited migration of their current design system onto a new framework that could be effectively leveraged across design, product, and development.
“Our goal was to evolve our fragmented, static design system into a dynamic, adaptive framework that empowers both designers and engineers.” – Daniel Spirn, Director of Product Design at Uniphore
Speed and consistency were crucial, but so too was building out the right team and processes to embed and sustain the program altogether. In this article, we will explore how we not only met Uniphore’s needs but created a strategic design framework built to propel product innovation for years to come.
The challenge
With the AI market exploding and Uniphore experiencing hypergrowth, the company recognized that it needed a new approach to accelerate its ability to deliver product innovations. Product design is an integral part of that process. When Daniel Spirn joined Uniphore, he quickly recognized a critical internal challenge: the company needed a unified design language. At the time, there were five separate applications, each containing different components and UI libraries. Teams at Uniphore were spending extra time because of this fragmentation.
The symptoms of this were clear, including:
Disparate design identities and experiences across multiple product lines
Limited UI library documentation
Inconsistencies in how design and dev teams operated
These challenges were not just causing technical headaches, they also required extra work for Uniphore teams to bring enterprise solutions to the market rapidly. With tight three-month product delivery deadlines, the need for a transformative solution was apparent.
The solution
To stay on the leading edge, Uniphore was looking to make its design systems efficient, unified, and future-proofed. To do this, Uniphore and Neuron came together under the guidance of Daniel and Neuron’s Co-Founder, Chris Marciano, and leveraged both organizations’ respective strengths:
Framework selection:
The first step was to align libraries. After careful evaluation, we chose AG Grid, Apache Echarts, and Ant Design to accelerate the process, allowing seamless framework integration and well-vetted solutions.
Figma integration:
The incorporation of Variables into the Figma REST API was first introduced on June 21, 2023. By utilizing this next-gen capability within Figma, we were able to create a dynamic design environment that eliminated friction points and allowed for a consistent look and feel.
Internal feedback loops:
Continuous engagement with internal product designers ensured that the emerging design system met real-world operational needs.
With the right architecture in hand, working with design and development teams to make sure the system was practical and painless was the final pillar that catapulted Uniphore’s design system into the future.
The Uni-Ant system: a flexible design ecosystem
Our DesignOps collaboration yielded the Uni-Ant system—Uniphore’s internal design system that leverages Ant Design components along with custom color theming.
“The UniAnt design system is more than just a sticker sheet. Each component is fully connected and transformed via the Master JSON file. This in turn ensures that all designers and engineers remain well-aligned.” – Chris Marciano, Co-Founder of Neuron
To build this truly collaborative and responsive design system, we leveraged Figma’s enhanced REST API, enabling designers and engineers to iterate quickly and deploy polished work faster. Taking it a step further, we integrated Storybook—an open-source tool that syncs with Figma—creating a single, comprehensive source of truth. This seamless connection allows teams to pull engineering assets into an integrated environment where they can test new components and properties with precision.
The result
The Uni-Ant design system was undoubtedly a feat on its own, but the results of its implementation were even more so. The four most significant outcomes from the design system overhaul were:
Productivity surge:
Engineers were able to complete tasks more efficiently and consistently.
Time to market acceleration:
Increased productivity allowed for faster development. Rapid product feature updates and tweaks became the new standard.
Enhanced governance:
The system demystified change management. Updates became transparent, allowing each team member access to the latest designs and documentation.:
Customer success:
With internal workflows streamlined, Uniphore’s enterprise clients were able to achieve faster and more seamless custom implementations. The benefits are evident both internally and externally, driving stronger adoption and satisfaction.
“Our team’s velocity to deliver world-changing solutions is our key metric, and the Uni-Ant design system is a major contributor. By offering pre-built, adaptable components right out of the box, we empower our engineers to move faster and iterate swiftly. What used to take weeks now takes a single day.” - Daniel Spirn, Director of Product Design at Uniphore
A blueprint for design innovation
As a customer-led, design-focused organization, Uniphore’s collaboration with Neuron helped to future-proof their overall design practice, which helps deliver customer-centric solutions faster. By prioritizing flexibility, accessibility, and continuous improvement, the resulting system is an exemplar of an innovative enterprise design strategy.
In fact, during a recent natural disaster, a local municipality approached Uniphore with a request to support some emergency services with an AI solution. Uniphore was able to work with this customer and deliver on their commitment within a few days because of their flexible design system.
To Neuron, when we say ‘future-proof’, that means looking ahead to future opportunities the Uni-Ant system can adapt to, including:
Further cross-platform experience optimization
Continued refinement of design-engineering collaboration
Scaling the design system further across emergent product lines
For enterprise product teams looking to elevate their approach to DesignOps, Uniphore’s journey offers a compelling roadmap: invest in frameworks, prioritize collaboration, and view design as a strategic, adaptive capability with a long horizon in mind.
"Neuron excelled at understanding us as a client, asking the right questions to address knowledge gaps and driving the discovery process. They acted as 'boots on the ground,' stepping in when our team needed the capacity to build a design system for our exact needs.” – Tushar Shah, CPO at Uniphore
Whether we’re updating an Enterprise product or architecting a B2B design system, we take pride in partnering with industry leaders. Neuron is leading the charge on DesignOps, helping to bring new ideas to market and breathing life into existing systems.
Ready to begin your DesignOps transformation? Reach out to our team of experts today.
About Uniphore
Uniphore is a leading B2B AI-native company with decades of proven success. Engineered for scalability and tailored for enterprise needs, we drive AI transformation that delivers real business impact across multiple industries and the largest global deployments. Our Zero Data AI Cloud is built on a multimodal AI and data platform and is at the heart of this transformation, enabling businesses to swiftly deploy AI across the enterprise.
With our Zero-Data AI Cloud, organizations can harness their data and create scalable, domain-specific AI models to democratize enterprise knowledge—all while ensuring security, sovereignty, and rapid value delivery. Today, Uniphore’s technology empowers over 750,000 end-users across 1,600 enterprises in 20 countries. Discover the unmatched capabilities of Uniphore—because there’s no AI like it™.
About Neuron
Neuron is a bi-coastal UX collaborative headquartered in San Francisco. From user experience implementation to DesignOps consulting, Neuron partners with leading organizations like Uniphore to transform B2B products and internal design processes.
With nearly a decade of experience serving SaaS, healthcare, AI, finance, and logistics, Neuron helps enterprises strategically evaluate and optimize their product’s user experience. By enhancing functionality, usability, and execution, Neuron helps businesses create impactful solutions that not only meet user needs but also fuel growth in an ever-increasing competitive landscape. Contact our team to learn more.
