Words with a dotted underline are buttons: focus or press one to hear what it means and when it matters.
About
Fluent in design, code and .
I build design systems that give designers and developers a shared language: , components, and the decisions behind them, written down kindly so everyone can use them.
The short lead
A shared language, not a .
Teams move fast. A good system helps them move together.
Components get duplicated. Decisions get made under sprint pressure and nobody writes them down. The file meant to be the turns into the one nobody trusts. I dig out the structure underneath and write it down, so design and dev can talk again. Then I hand it over: the system belongs to the team, not to me. It's the part I'd do for free.
- Token architecture
- Component libraries in Storybook
- Governance and contribution
- AI-ready docs and MCP
Track record
Where I've .
Five teams, one thread: making the system the thing people trust.
- Built a Figma component library aligned with reusable web components and a multi-theme architecture.
- Translated an existing code-based design system into production-ready Figma components.
- Explored AI-enabled governance workflows for design-system compliance and automation.
- Brought AI into Mango's design-system work for the first time. With Claude, Figma MCP and Code Connect I automated audits and made components machine-readable, so I could ship far more in a few months while keeping Mango's design system up to date.
- Built the tooling and documentation the team needed to adopt Code Connect themselves, so design-to-code parity didn't depend on me.
- Owned cross-platform component governance across web, iOS and Android within Mango's design system, during a leadership transition.
Clients included Air France and WeRoad.
- Built the company's first design system from scratch (tokens, components, themes), with AI in mind from day one, and integrated the tokens into production with engineering.
- Wrote the documentation even when I was told it wasn't important, because a system nobody can read is a system nobody uses.
- Led the UX transformation of a legacy SaaS travel platform: booking, admin, finance and multi-role dashboards.
- Defined user roles, permission structures and dashboard frameworks for a multi-stakeholder institutional platform.
- Designed scalable information architecture for operational workflows across departments.
- Delivered interactive prototypes for executive review and funding discussions.
Client: Riyad Bank.
- Designed enterprise banking and SaaS platform experiences for digital clients.
- Ran user research and usability testing to validate complex workflows.
The pack
Good company.
Word of mouth
In their own .
Six of fifteen recommendations, quoted as written.
Straight up: Elleta is awesome. … She's now with us on the bleeding edge of AI & design systems, embracing new tools and ways of working. … Any team would be lucky to have Elleta join their crew.
Brad Frost During her time with the team, she introduced valuable AI-driven automations and shared recommendations that helped us explore new ways of working.
Xavier Boluda She delivers impeccably organized, developer-friendly design files, proactively communicates her intent, anticipates edge cases, and treats technical constraints as creative opportunities rather than obstacles.
Mario Mezini Her Figma files were clean, well-structured, and edge cases were already handled, which made implementation feel like a natural extension of the design rather than a negotiation.
Davide J. Spiga While Elleta is very creative and a great design systems person, she’s an even better human being. She brings enthusiasm to the table with care, humor, and respect to top it off.
Ian Frost The impact of her work as a UX/UI Designer continues to resonate within our banking projects, such as those for Riyad Bank.
Roberto Arpón
New tricks
Design systems that hold up when shows up.
AI is part of how I work, not a trick in the deck.
I use Claude to synthesise research and audits, draft docs, and check my own work. I'm happy to try a new tool the week it lands: , , .
But the tools are the easy part. A system only sticks when the people using it trust it, so I work with teams, not against them: pairing with engineers, bringing designers into the decisions, and building the relationships that shape how a company actually uses its system.
At Mango I was the first to bring AI into their design-system work: I used it to audit and ship faster while updating the system, then built the tools so the team could carry on without me. My most recent example is the site you're on. It runs on , my own design system: tokens, components in Storybook, and docs an AI can read.
House rules
Four things I about.
Kindness
Docs written for the person reading them at 5pm on a Friday.
Respect
For the designer's craft and the engineer's time. I check it can be built before I design it three ways.
Sharing
I learned all of this in public, from Brad Frost, Vitaly Friedman, Nathan Curtis, Romina Kavčić and the Into Design Systems crowd. So I give it back: BELLA is open for anyone to read.
Love of the craft
Naming, tokens, . The unglamorous stuff is my favourite stuff.