Theme lab
Pick a palette and the whole page re-skins, this card included. Every colour on it comes from one set of tokens.
Nate Mills
Senior Product Designer, Design Systems
This portfolio is interactive. See the live version:
Consumer apps. B2B tools. Design systems.Consumer apps. B2B tools. Design systems.
Senior product designer, design systems specialist
Brands I’ve worked with
Tools & platforms
Training & standards
Product design is the craft.
Design systems are the specialty.
I’ve designed consumer apps, B2B clinician tools, medical equipment and the design systems behind them. Different industries, same instinct: make the complicated feel obvious.
The foundation under the product: tokens, governance, automation, accessibility from day one.
Building the components is the easy bit. The hard part is everything around them: tokens that hold when the brand changes, docs nobody has to chase me for, and a way in for contributors. That’s where the time goes.
Style DictionaryOne source, every platformI’d rather get it right once than fix it forty times. Contrast, focus, tap targets and motion live in the tokens, so an inaccessible component is hard to build by accident.
AI is best at the parts that were never the craft. Ten directions in an afternoon, and a way to stress test what I design. The taste is still mine.
Every design team has someone quietly redoing the same job every Tuesday. It almost never needs to be a person. Build it once, and you’ll get the hours back.
This site is a product too. Here are three parts of it you can use right now.
Pick a palette and the whole page re-skins, this card included. Every colour on it comes from one set of tokens.
The tokens, type, icons and components this page is built from, with the rule for when not to use each one.
Opens the whole system: colour, type, space, motion, glass and components.
Don’t take my word for it. Pick an assistant and it opens with this question already filled in.
Design Systems Consultant
Three brands, three platforms, and requests arriving through eight different doors. Everyone was solving the same problems twice. So:
Design Systems Lead
I was the senior UI designer on the flight booking redesign, iOS and Android. Conversion went up 3.6%, worth $1.7M.
Then led the design system behind both Virgin Australia and Velocity Frequent Flyer: two brands, one system, seven squads, 150+ people shipping across web, iOS and Android.
Senior UI Designer
A ground-up rebuild of the My Membership app. They scrapped the old one, and I helped build what replaced it.
Senior Product Designer
Eight years at Healthcare Human Factors, embedded at Toronto General (UHN), ranked the No.2 hospital in the world. A confusing interface there can hurt someone. The brief was simple: design the preventable errors out.
Product Designer
Industrial design came first. It taught me how things actually get made. The agency years in Munich and Toronto taught me pace and range.
The bridge to now was University Health Network, where prototyping medical equipment beside clinicians pulled me from hardware into UX and UI. 20 years, five disciplines, three continents: the judgment to know which rules matter, which can bend, and how to make good design easy to ship.
Three brands, five drifting token libraries, and one roadmap back to a single source of truth.
74%
Token reduction
131→48
Figma libraries
8→1
Intake channels
~18h
Reclaimed weekly
I built it to read your Figma variables and write clean DTCG tokens. No config.
2
Formats
~2s
Export time
0
Dependencies
100%
W3C DTCG
This whole page renders from the same tokens. One change cascades everywhere.
313
Design tokens
3
Tier architecture
100%
Token-driven
AA
WCAG grade
Heart failure can turn dangerous overnight. Patients check in daily, and their care team steps in.
50%
Fewer hospitalisations
520+
Patients on Medly
59%
BNP biomarker drop
2020
Published results
Testicular cancer hits men at their busiest. I designed the follow-up tool, and the components under it.
>330
Virtual visits
>100
Patients enrolled
70%
High visit compliance
2017
Live since
After treatment, survivors still faced the long drive and the crowded waiting room.
5
Health centres
3
National funders
3
Hospital clients
2021
Virtual Clinic rollout
Product, Design and Research Lead
Worked closely with Nate on a design system audit, and he delivered exactly what you want from someone in that space: clarity, rigour, and practical impact.
What stood out was his ability to translate complex environments into clear, actionable recommendations. Not just critique, but a path forward that teams can actually implement.
If you need someone to assess, stabilise, or evolve a design system with real-world constraints in mind, Nate is a solid choice.
Product Manager
Nathan always showed a clear passion for building the right products for the right users. Over the years, I have worked with him on multiple product teams and in each one, Nathan demonstrated a deep understanding of the problem and produced creative designs to meet the needs.
He is able to deliver on tight timelines, works well in a team and responds well to feedback. I enjoyed working with Nathan and look forward to seeing what he creates next.
General Manager
Nathan has done great work in Virgin Australia’s Digital Design team as a Senior UI Designer; establishing the foundation for our design system, reworking design creation processes that streamlined our workflow and applying a much-needed technical framework to drive consistency and high-quality design across our channels.
I appreciate his no-nonsense approach and clear communication style. You can rely on him to tackle complex design challenges and deliver practical solutions.
Executive Director
Nate is a joy to work with. He would be my go-to designer when I sought exceptional creativity. He is so good at looking at all of our design inputs and synthesizing them into prototypes, and then on to realizing them fully.
His designs for our work at SickKids are still relevant and thriving, years after he conceived them. I have nothing but praise for Nate as an exceptional design colleague.
Head of Design
I’ve had the pleasure of working with Nathan as he has played a key role in advancing our design system. He brought a sharp creative eye and strong attention to detail that consistently elevated the quality and consistency of our design work.
His contributions helped us lay solid foundations for scalable and cohesive design practices.
Design Director
Nathan has been a great asset to HCF and to the design team overall. He joined during the redesign of our flagship application, and quickly took charge of some delicate UI processes. His deliverables have been of the highest standard, raising the bar internally and helping the rest of the team with custom tools and helpers.
I would not hesitate hiring Nathan and am genuinely looking forward to working with him again in the future, should our paths cross again.
Lead UI Designer
Nathan has a methodical approach to solving UI design problems and always considers how his work integrates with our wider experience. He balances accessibility and development feasibility with touches of fun and brand personality.
Nathan has also set up a solid foundation for Virgin Australia’s Design System, including processes, amazingly detailed documentation, ways of working across squads, and a clear plan for how we can scale in the future.
Product Design Leader
Nathan is one of those exceptionally rare individuals who is not only extremely skilled at what he does but also genuinely enjoys it.
He consistently goes above and beyond, effectively balancing his confidence with being an attentive listener. He possesses a proactive nature and consistently strives for self-improvement.
When it comes to task delegation, you can wholeheartedly rely on him. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have Nathan as a valuable member of my team.
Degree
Where the process started: understand the person, prototype, test, make it real.
Credentials
ARIA, keyboard navigation, colour contrast, semantic HTML.
Verify with GoogleAnthropic
LLM adoption framework, prompt design, responsible human-model delegation.
Microsoft
Accessibility patterns and WCAG applied to Microsoft 365.
Verify with Microsoft
IBM
IBM Design Thinking: hills, playbacks, sponsor users, and the loop.
Verify on CredlyTAFE NSW
Responsible AI principles, governance, policy, and ethical AI use across the lifecycle.
University of the Sunshine Coast
WCAG, POUR, and the Disability Discrimination Act applied to digital design.
2019, Web3 and Blockchain Transformation Awards (W3B)
A privacy framework that gives patients control of the consent that unlocks their health data.
With IBM and eHealth Ontario, UHN built the Patient Control and Consent Blockchain on Hyperledger Fabric and piloted it at Toronto General Hospital: a privacy framework that lets patients control consent for unlocking their health data. I am a co-recipient with the Healthcare Human Factors team at UHN.
The full story
2017, Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE
The first Bold Epic Innovator Award ever given, for a wearable vital-signs monitor.
The first time XPRIZE gave this award, it came with US$100,000 and went to Team Cloud DX for VITALITI, a wearable vital-signs monitor. Google was a partner in the competition alongside Qualcomm. I am a co-recipient through UHN Healthcare Human Factors, the team that did the device’s human-factors redesign.
The full story
See the tokens at work.