Design that Connects
As Lead Product Designer, I guide the evolution of Sky UI, the design system underpinning one of the UK’s largest entertainment and connectivity brands. My role is to ensure that the system is to drive consistency, flexibility and scalability across Sky’s complex product ecosystem, as well as embeding accessibility and inclusivity as core principles from the ground up.
Sky UI is more than a shared library of components: it is a strategic foundation that allows Sky’s diverse product teams to move faster without sacrificing craft or quality. I partner closely with engineers to define how components should adapt across contexts, balancing strict design standards with flexibility for brand expression. This balance is crucial, as the system is also designed to become the base for Now’s new (and inprogress) design system, extending its reach and impact beyond Sky’s primary products.
Setting the vision
A major focus of my leadership is ensuring inclusive design at scale. I work with accessibility specialists to validate component behaviour, typography and colour contrast. I advocate for and direct guidelines so that every new pattern is tested against accessibility standards, whilst also ensuring inclusive language and motion principles are respected. By embedding these practices directly into the system, accessibility stopped being an afterthought and is now a natural outcome of using Sky UI.
When I initially joined the Sky design system team Sky had multiple digital products, each with slightly different interpretations of brand and interaction patterns. This led to duplication, design debt and slow delivery. Ever since we unified these experiences through a single system, all these problems have been reduced completely.
Briefly the system's principles can be summarised as:
- Consistency – establishing a recognisable, trustworthy interface across Sky’s products.
- Flexibility – enabling teams to adapt patterns without feeling constrained by the system.
- Scalability – designing for today’s needs while laying foundations for future platforms, including Now.
- Accessibility & Inclusivity – ensuring that interfaces are usable, legible and welcoming for all audiences, regardless of ability or context.
My role is to define and maintain this vision; to build adoption across teams and making sure the system works not just at the level of craft, but more importantly at a strategic level.
Robust and reusable foundations
I lead the creation of components and patterns that can flex across multiple use cases, from forms and navigation to data-heavy modules. Each is designed with responsiveness, accessibility and localisation in mind.
Working closely with engineering, I've introduced systematic a use of tokens to ensure visual consistency to support customisation, whilst enabling us (and the wider Design Team) to manage typography, colour, spacing, motion and also flexibility so various product teams can creatively extend patterns intelligently.
Building Sky UI is a deeply collaborative effort; in fact, on the one hand, I work side-by-side with engineers and QA Test Leads to ensure technical feasibility and smooth handoff, and on the other I partner with the Head of Design and Product Owners to align component priorities with business outcomes.
To scale adoption, I run workshops, critiques and weekly update sessions with all designers and developers across Sky. My team and I also coach the Design Team in system thinking and we ask them to contribute back to the library. Thanks to this culture of shared ownership, we are reducing fragmentation and ensuring Sky UI to be embraced across product teams.
Impact and scalabilty
Sky UI is the backbone of Sky’s product experience, streamlining design and engineering workflows in order to raise quality standards across the board.
Importantly, the system is designed to be portable — forming the base for Now’s upcoming design system and thanks to this forward-looking approach we can invest in multipling Sky UI's impact across brands, products and platforms.
Building Sky UI is a deeply collaborative effort; in fact, on the one hand, I work side-by-side with engineers and QA Test Leads to ensure technical feasibility and smooth handoff, and on the other I partner with the Head of Design and Product Owners to align component priorities with business outcomes.
This would not have been possible hadn't I applied the experience learned and developed whilst working on Uswicth's Spark Design System. It was here that I first introduced a modular component library and established design system foundations that supported product scaling. Spark was initially designed for Uswitch and then became the base for all the company's sister websites: money.co.uk, confused.com, Mojo, Bankrate and more.
Looking ahead
The next milestone is operational efficiency: deeper automation of tokens, tighter integration with engineering pipelines and expanding the system into more complex components such as data grids, tables and dynamic dashboards for our service pages in "My Sky account", as well as for our "assisted journeys" that our retail colleagues use in Sky stores.
By building not just a library but a design-tech partnership, Sky UI continues to scale in line with Sky’s ambitions.
Final thoughts
his work demonstrates how design systems are not only craft exercises but strategic tools. By balancing consistency with flexibility, empowering teams to adopt and extend, as well as influencing across functions, I've helped lay the foundations for design at scale at Sky.
It’s also a clear example of design leadership in practice: facilitating collaboration, mentoring designers in system thinking and showing how design systems can transform not just the product, but the way teams work.
