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One platform, 400+ brands

Building the design system, governance, and visual language for the VIDAA smart TV OS.

RoleSr. Director, Global Product Design

Team1 → 11, across five time zones

PlatformSmart TV OS

CompanyVIDAA (Hisense)

Design systems · Governance · Accessibility · Visual language

One standard, many brands.

Outcome

400+OEM brands in 180 countries on one design standard, replacing fragmentation across partners, journeys, and surfaces.

AAWCAG accessibility plus mandatory market requirements, including Europe’s.

20%+team productivity after moving to async collaboration and a shared design system.

50%faster partner certification, with clear product narratives and prototypes.

Globalvisual language refresh shipped in 2022, with the brand identity preserved.

1 → 11at peak, a global design organization built from a team of one.

The full story

Context, my role, approach, and what I’d do differently.

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01

Context

VIDAA is the smart TV operating system behind Hisense and 400+ OEM partner brands, shipping in 180 countries. Every brand wanted the platform to feel like its own, and every market brought its own rules, from languages to Europe’s strict accessibility requirements.

Without a shared standard, partners, journeys, and surfaces drifted apart, and every new brand made the problem bigger.

Screen: several OEM-branded home screens side by side, the same platform under different brands.

02

My role

Sr. Director, Global Product Design. I built the design organization from a team of one into a global team of eleven at peak, across five time zones: product designers and UX researchers in a two-layer structure, plus freelance content writers. I owned the design system, its governance, and the platform’s visual language.

[Years of the design system effort, and who you partnered with in Engineering and Product.]

03

Approach

One standard, many brands

Unified UX and UI standards across the TV OS and every OEM partner surface, so the platform behaved consistently while each brand still looked like itself. [How brand customization worked: which elements partners could change, and which stayed fixed.]

Accessibility built into the system

Designed to WCAG AA, with mandatory requirements built in from the start: TV setup that opens with a voice-guided option, high contrast, zoom, and closed captioning, meeting Europe’s stricter standards.

Governance that scales

Standards were reinforced through tooling: a partner engagement tool that onboards new partners and automates TV app certification, so consistency didn’t depend on manual review. Clear product narratives and prototypes cut partner certification time in half. [One example of a standard the governance caught or enforced.]

One source of truth for the team

Moved the team from design reviews by email and PDF to async collaboration tools: comments in context, live syncs, and reusable components in one design system as the single source of truth, lifting overall productivity by 20%+.

A visual language refresh without losing identity

In 2022, at the request of the CEO and VP of Product, I led a transitional rebrand with the marketing manager, updating the TV UI, UX, and visual language globally while keeping the brand symbol intact.

Screen: design system overview, core components, interaction patterns, and accessibility settings.

Screen: 2022 rebrand, before and after, same screen side by side.

04

What I’d do differently

[Your words. What would you set up earlier: tokens, documentation, a contribution model for partners? Where did governance slow teams down, and how would you balance that?]

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