The Challenge
After two decades of aggressive growth through strategic acquisitions, Genius Sports had built an impressive sports data empire—but at a cost. The company’s rapid expansion had created a fragmented ecosystem of over 30 software products spanning live sports streaming, data visualization, betting platforms, and corporate websites. Each acquisition brought its own design patterns, component libraries, and development practices, resulting in:
- Technical Debt Crisis: Over 15 outdated design libraries caused teams to rebuild identical components, slowing development cycles
- UX Fragmentation: Inconsistent navigation and interaction patterns made products feel disconnected rather than unified
- Commercial Impact: Sales teams couldn’t demonstrate cohesive offerings, undermining our premium positioning with extended integration timelines
- Team Inefficiencies: Designers repeatedly solved the same problems while developers lacked reusable components, creating further product divergence
The core challenge wasn’t just visual—it was systemic. We needed to transform how an entire organization approached product development while maintaining the agility that had driven our success.
My Role & Approach
As Group Head of UX & Design, I recognized that this challenge required more than traditional design system thinking. This was fundamentally an organizational transformation project that happened to express itself through design. My approach centered on three core principles:
Design System as Product Strategy
- Position as critical business initiative, not side project
- Develop dedicated product roadmap with success metrics
- Apply same rigor as customer-facing products
- Enlist product owner with full accountability and autonomy
Cross-Functional Leadership
- Build bridges between siloed teams
- Secure buy-in across design, engineering, product, legal, and commercial
- Create shared ownership of the solution
- Facilitate active participation from all stakeholders
Sustainable Governance
- Establish processes that evolve with business needs
- Create clear pathways for contribution and modification
- Build scalable adoption frameworks
- Ensure system enhances rather than constrains growth
My role encompassed strategic vision, team leadership, stakeholder management, and hands-on design direction. I was simultaneously evangelizing the concept to executives, mentoring designers through new ways of working, and collaborating with engineers on technical implementation details.
Building Organizational Buy-in
I launched the initiative at our annual company retreat in Vilnius, Lithuania, presenting to all division heads and team leads simultaneously. The presentation focused on business impact rather than design theory—demonstrating how fragmentation was costing us in development time, customer satisfaction, and competitive positioning.
Key elements of my pitch included:
- Design System Overview: As most of senior leadership were non-technical, I had to briefly explain what design systems are
- Quantified Pain Points: I documented specific examples where inconsistency had caused project delays, customer confusion, or additional development costs
- ROI Projections: I outlined where we might see potential savings in development time and improved commercial outcomes
- Technical Overview: I displayed a high-level overview of the proposed system’s architecture to communicate support impact on teams
The result was unanimous agreement to proceed, with committed resources and executive sponsorship across all divisions.
Assembling the Right Team
I carefully selected a core team of seven specialists who would serve as “keepers of design truth.” This wasn’t just about design skills—I needed people who could think systemically and collaborate across disciplines:
Leadership
Jason Luna (myself): Temp Product Owner – responsible for vision, roadmap, and stakeholder alignment
Stephen Gardner: Executive Adviser – responsible for business alignment and resource allocation
UX Strategy & Research
Lissa Aguilar, UX Strategist – responsible for user research and usability validation
Brandon Smith, UX Strategist – responsible for workflow analysis and adoption strategies
UI Design
Alius Kveinys: Lead Designer – responsible for visual language and component specifications
Rashmi Lopez: Senior UI Designer – responsible for detailed component specifications and documentation
Engineering & QA
Daniela Angarita: Lead Front-End Tooling – responsible for developer experience and tooling integration
Tommy Barth: Lead Front-End Delivery – responsible for component development and technical architecture
Dan Mizuba: QA Manager – responsible for testing standards and quality assurance processes
Each member brought specific expertise while contributing to collective decision-making. We established regular working sessions, clear communication protocols, and shared accountability for outcomes.
Establishing Clear Goals & Metrics
Rather than relying on subjective measures of success, I defined specific, measurable objectives:
Primary Goals:
- Shared Design Language: Create common vocabulary and understanding between product owners, designers, developers, and stakeholders
- Reusability at Scale: Build components that could be applied flexibly across diverse product requirements
- Clear Decision Communication: Document and defend design decisions through research and best practices
- Product Planning Integration: Enable product owners to plan roadmaps with predictable design system capabilities
- Team Empowerment: Give product owners tools to build quickly without sacrificing quality
- Sustainable Evolution: Create processes for continuous improvement and adaptation
- Organizational Access: Ensure easy discovery and adoption across all teams
- Progressive Enhancement: Ensure that teams using legacy systems could adopt core or basic components and features meanwhile planning for deeper development
Success Metrics
UX Scorecard Improvement:
Measurable increases in usability and consistency across products
Adoption Rate by Product Line:
Percentage of teams actively using design system components
Product Coverage:
How much of our ecosystem was supported by the design system
Team Satisfaction:
Regular surveys measuring product owner, developer and designer satisfaction with the system
Development Velocity:
Measurable improvements in feature delivery timelines
System Performance:
Progressive improvement to system performance, load times and resource usage
Governance That Scales
Drawing inspiration from Brad Frost’s design system governance principles, I established a structured process that balanced quality control with development velocity while maintaining our rapid growth trajectory.
View full GSDS Governance Framework
Three-Pathway Decision Framework:
I created clear decision trees for every component request:
- Perfect Match: Existing components met requirements exactly—teams could proceed immediately
- Close Match: Components almost met needs—facilitated collaboration to explore theming or configuration solutions
- New Requirement: Truly new components required evaluation for system inclusion versus product-specific implementation
Systematic Quality Process:
Every component underwent comprehensive evaluation including prototyping and concept review, formal design and development phases, multi-dimensional testing (accessibility, performance, cross-browser compatibility), thorough documentation, and staged delivery. This ensured quality while maintaining development momentum.
Sustainable Evolution:
Rather than creating static rules, I established the design system as a living product with clear ownership, regular review cycles, feedback mechanisms, and processes for continuous improvement that could scale with our growing organization.
Federated Contribution Model:
Created rotating contributor network with monthly collaboration sessions, ensuring diverse perspectives while maintaining quality standards. Contributors serve as evangelists within their teams and provide ongoing feedback on system evolution.
Technical Overview
I created a simple diagram to illustrate the technical and delivery architecture of the design system. This would ultimately lead to the building of proprietary tools that would create automated and semi-automated solutions to ensure that the design system was deeply integrated and well documented into our product development pipelines. We also used many third-party tools and software solutions on top of our custom built tools.
Innovation Through Custom Tools
Beyond traditional design systems, I led the development of three proprietary tools that automated integration and democratized design capabilities across the organization:
Theme Genius: Real-Time Customization Platform
Commercial teams needed to demonstrate brand customization during sales presentations without breaking design consistency. Theme Genius solved this by creating a sophisticated theming engine for instant previews.
Key Features:
- Live preview of color, typography, and spacing changes on real components
- Built-in accessibility and usability guardrails
- Export as JSON files or direct integration with Builder tool
- Real-time sales demonstration capabilities
Builder Tool: Democratized Component Assembly
Product and commercial teams needed to create layouts quickly without designer involvement while maintaining quality standards.
Key Features:
- Drag-and-drop interface with approved design system components
- Intelligent constraints preventing broken layouts
- Multi-platform export (web, mobile, native)
- Version control and collaboration features
Automated Pipeline Integration: Seamless Development Workflow
The biggest challenge was integrating the design system into existing development processes without creating bottlenecks.
Key Components:
- Design token automation using Salesforce’s Theo
- Automatic Storybook updates from design changes
- Built-in quality gates and testing
- Self-generating developer documentation
These tools reduced layout creation time from weeks to hours while ensuring all outputs remained consistent with our design standards.
Results & Impact
The Genius Sports Design System delivered transformational results across the organization:
Product & Development Efficiency:
- Unified 30+ software products under a cohesive design language
- Reduced component development time by up to 60% through reusable libraries
- Decreased UI-related bug reports by 75%
- Accelerated feature delivery through standardized components
- Reduced overall file size and decreased load times by up to 50% on web platforms
Business Advantages:
- Enabled sales teams to demonstrate cohesive product offerings and offer customization at little cost to client
- Reduced client implementation timelines through standardized patterns
- Enhanced positioning as premium, enterprise-grade solution provider
- Generated rapid customization capabilities for enterprise clients
Organizational Transformation:
- Transformed UX from cost center to revenue contributor
- Improved collaboration between design, development, and commercial teams
- Eliminated five outdated design libraries consuming maintenance resources
- Created sustainable processes for ongoing evolution and improvement
Key Learnings
This project fundamentally changed my approach to design leadership:
Systems Thinking Over Components: The biggest challenges were organizational, not technical. Success required changing how people collaborate, not just standardizing visual elements.
Governance Drives Adoption: Sustainable processes for evolution and contribution were more critical than the initial component library. Without proper governance, even excellent design systems become technical debt.
Custom Tooling Scales Impact: Building tools like Theme Genius and Builder democratized design capabilities and created force multiplication effects far beyond traditional component libraries.
Business Alignment Ensures Success: Framing the design system in terms of business outcomes rather than design theory was essential for sustained executive support and organizational adoption.
