Last week, Mirion Technologies’ recently launched Design Language System (DLS) received global acclaim by winning the 2021 iF Design Award in the Professional Concept category. The recognition arrives just days after the winners’ announcement, marking a significant moment for Mirion’s UX transformation—fueled by collaboration with Atlanta-based strategic design agency Thrive and led by UX designer Yunyun Zhou.
Mirion’s challenge was immense: following years of acquisitions, the company’s portfolio exceeded 550 products, each developed independently under different teams and visual regimes. This fragmentation led to costly inefficiencies and a lack of consistent brand expression. The DLS reimagined Mirion’s digital ecosystem by introducing three core usage contexts—Alert, Search, Analyze—and layering in reusable interaction components, navigational logic, and adaptable visual themes, including light/dark modes. The result is a coherent, scalable UX system that reduces design debt and strengthens brand equity across industrial and medical instrumentation platforms.
The DLS captures Mirion’s purpose in an expressive yet structured UX framework. Drawing from “Experience Platforms,” the system translates brand DNA and design principles into repeatable behavior patterns and signature elements. It enables designers and engineers to apply consistent experiences across interfaces, from mobile apps to hardware dashboards. Users now encounter a predictable flow whether they are monitoring alarms, querying complex datasets, or comparing analytic outputs. The DLS successfully transformed brand intent into tangible, two‑ and three‑dimensional operational standards.
Established in 1954 by iF International Forum Design GmbH in Hanover, the iF Design Award is regarded as one of the most prestigious accolades in the design world. Each year, it draws thousands of entries from over 50–70 countries, reviewed by a panel of international, independent design experts. The award spans nine disciplines—including the relatively new UX and UI categories—and offers designers a globally recognized seal of excellence. Winning in the Professional Concept category adds significant weight: the accolade recognizes not only aesthetic quality but real-world relevance, strategic clarity, and capacity to scale across organizations.
At the core of the DLS project was Yunyun Zhou, UX designer at Thrive and principal architect of the system’s user experience vision. Zhou drove the research and synthesis of Mirion’s diverse use scenarios, defined reusable component libraries, and specified the design behaviors essential to industrial-scale workflows, especially in safety-critical contexts like alarm responsiveness and search operations. Her design methodology prioritized real-world UX consistency over superficial polish, enabling multiple product teams to operate with shared standards and reducing rework. In effect, Zhou’s leadership turned scattered interfaces into an integrated system with a clear identity and functional coherence.
In addition to her digital interface work, Zhou played a critical role in standardizing the user experiences of over 100 existing physical products—many of which were previously designed in silos across different Mirion divisions. She carefully studied their operational logic, display constraints, and contextual usage patterns to ensure the DLS applied across both hardware and software. More importantly, Zhou developed scalable guidelines that allow future Mirion products—whether analog instruments or complex digital systems—to inherit consistent design logic. Her contribution has laid the foundation for a sustainable and brand-coherent product ecosystem.
Zhou’s role underscores a broader UX evolution: moving from ornamental interface work to strategic, system-scale orchestration. Through this project, she set a new standard for how enterprise-grade UX can unify complexity and empower high-stakes technical systems to be intuitive, efficient, and resilient.
