Verizon

Scaling and maintaining Verizon’s design system.

Design System management across mobile, tablet, desktop and TV

Overview

Verizon is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world. One of their digital products is Fios TV, a streaming platform comparable to Sky in the UK.

Customers access Fios TV through a set-top box connected to their TV, giving them access to live TV, streaming apps, on-demand content, and a content store.

As an agency, we were responsible for the design system supporting Verizon’s TV streaming products, including two set-top box experiences, tvOS, and Fire TV.

My role

I worked as Design System Lead, focusing on the evolution and scalability of the TV design system. I partnered closely with product designers, engineers, and brand teams to ensure the system could support current and future TV experiences.

5 separate TV products, a mobile app and website all actively used these libraries daily across a design team split across London and New York which meant they needed to be maintain and evolved constantly with great detail and alignment

The challenge

The existing TV UI was constrained by a limited set of components, particularly content cards. The system was not designed to adapt to changing industry patterns or new content presentation needs.

Because the content card variations we so limited, there was low visual hierarchy and the experience felt monotonous to the client. It also meant we weren’t able to highlight special content, or be creative with layout.

Designing Flexible Content Cards

Content cards are the core component of the TV experience. I led the redesign of the card system to support multiple sizes and aspect ratios, including 16:9, portrait, square, and 4:3.

I mapped column grids and card variations to ensure new rails could be introduced without breaking existing layouts or margins.

The future TV design system

Early on in my time working on Verizon, I helped lead an initiative to envision how our design system could scale for future TV interfaces, aligning structure and principles with our global design direction.

The idea was so start building the next generation TV design system, using all the existing components we need, but re-designing them to be completely aligned with VDS and most of all - built to be flexible enough for future changes in the industry.

One of the larger parts to this was to create content cards and rails that could handle multiple ratios and sizes. This would allow Verizon to update their UI in an instant when the industry calls for it.

We expanded our content card range from 2 sizes to 6.

My role as a Design System Lead

Over the past four years, I’ve been responsible for the end-to-end management and evolution of all design libraries, particular the 2 set-top-box TV products and accompanying mobile app and web experience.

My role in the design system over the years has become more significant and i am now the POC for any updates & maintenance and i lead any updates that are needed. I’ve ensured the system remains scalable, inclusive, and forward-looking — a unified foundation that empowers product teams to design and build with consistency, quality, and speed.

Summary of my responsibilities:

  • Central ownership of a cross-product design system

  • Collaboration with design, engineering, and brand partners

  • Governance and maintenance of component libraries

  • Leadership of multiple modernization and rebrand initiatives

  • Continuous evolution toward automation and future-ready scalability.

  • Being to POC for any library updates and changes.