Learn to talk in two languages

Design System

Fintech

Company

Lucky App

Role

Product Design Lead

Year

2022

Lucky was one of Egypt’s leading fintech platforms, offering users personalised access to discounts, cashback, and promotions across thousands of local stores. As the app grew in popularity, its ecosystem became more complex—new features, markets, and partnerships emerged quickly. But with speed came the need for structure.

In 2022, I joined to lead the evolution of the design system—helping transform Lucky into a scalable, cohesive product that could maintain speed while offering a seamless, localised experience. "Learning in Two Languages" was more than just a metaphor; it reflected how we built a bridge between design and development, strategy and execution, English and Arabic.

1.The Pledge

Goals

Business: Strengthen Lucky’s position as a trusted savings platform in Middle East and enable faster go-to-market for new services.
Product: Build a scalable foundation to support feature velocity, consistency, and quality.
User: Create a unified experience that feels local, intuitive, and trustworthy—across different languages and user journeys.

Key Metrics

System Adoption: Track usage of design tokens and components across all product squads.
Design-Dev Efficiency: Reduce implementation time and improve consistency between design and code.
Localization Performance: Ensure seamless support for both Arabic (RTL) and English (LTR) without duplicating effort.
Release Speed: Monitor reduction in time-to-market for campaigns, features, and updates.

2. The Turn

Concepts

Trust & Clarity: A fintech app must always feel safe, transparent, and easy to use—even when users navigate offers, stores, or transactions.
Local Relevance: Designs had to resonate with Egyptian users—through visuals, copy, and layout that felt familiar and culturally appropriate.
Dual Language Fluidity: Supporting Arabic and English equally meant creating a system that worked for right-to-left and left-to-right logic, structure, and typography.

My Approach

Design System Overhaul: I rebuilt Lucky’s design system into a fully tokenized, RTL/LTR-adaptive architecture using Figma Variables and code-ready tokens.
Modular UI Components: We created reusable components that could adapt to promotional changes, dynamic content, and partner-specific styling—without rework.
Governance & Documentation: Introduced clear guidelines, component specs, and a shared language between designers and developers to improve cross-team alignment.
Typography Strategy: Selected font pairs that supported both Arabic and Latin scripts with consistent tone and legibility across devices.

3. The Prestige

Key Learnings

Successfully built a bilingual-first system that respected cultural nuances while maintaining scalability.
Reduced design-developer friction through token-based architecture and handoff documentation.
Designed with marketing, sales, and partnerships in mind—allowing flexible campaign launches without redesigns.

Success Metrics

Design System Adoption: Over 90% of new features and screens now built using the system, ensuring visual and functional consistency.
Developer Efficiency: Front-end teams reported a 50% reduction in build time thanks to reusable tokens and documented variants.
Localization Performance: One design, two languages: 100% parity achieved in English and Arabic layouts without separate designs.
Release Speed: Time-to-market for seasonal campaigns and new promos reduced by 35%.
Business Agility: Enabled rapid A/B testing of promotions, improving customer retention by leveraging design-driven iteration.

Conclusion

Upgrading Lucky’s design system was about much more than UI—it was about aligning teams, scaling culture, and delivering value with clarity and speed. In a product built for saving money, we saved time, cost, and confusion—creating a flexible system that now supports a platform millions rely on daily.

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