Overview

YOUTUBE SPORTS

Product Design
Design Systems
Standardization & Scalability
Enhanced Workflows
Library and File Optimization

SR. LEAD DESIGNER

Deloitte Digital x YouTube
2025 - 2026

CHALLENGE

YouTube delivers subscription-based live sports such as NFL Sunday Ticket across multiple distinct platforms: YouTube TV and the main YouTube app—each with their own distinct breakpoints in mobile, tablet, desktop and larger screens such as televisions. Over time, separate design and engineering teams caused the two platforms’ design systems and workflows to diverge. To support YouTube Sports' expansion, we needed to unify these systems and component libraries under YouTube Foundations standards—improving efficiency, UI consistency, and scalability across all existing and future sports offerings.

SOLUTION

We audited existing design files, systems, and libraries to pinpoint structural deltas. From there, we standardized core assets according to YouTube Foundations and created a unified, ultra-scalable component system designed to deliver a cohesive experience across all devices, platforms, and sports.

SPORTS CARDS COMPLETED

DESIGN SYSTEM SYNTHESIS

As two distinct product teams operated independently, core design assets—including Figma libraries, components, typography, and color systems—began to fragment. This created redundant efforts, effectively doubling the design and engineering resources needed to roll out new features. Beyond the operational friction, sports UI presented a unique design challenge: real-time statistics, live game data, and sports-specific ecosystems demanded flexible patterns that the core YouTube design system wasn't built to support. Resolving this required a cross-functional initiative to establish a single source of truth, aligning workflows to support future scalability, creativity, and system evolution.

Team MANAGEMENT

Primary production was driven by our distributed Deloitte Digital team in India, which introduced unique operational complexities across time zones. As the Lead U.S. Designer, I served as the primary bridge between YouTube's internal stakeholders and our offshore design team. Managing hundreds of evolving micro-components across global teams demanded rigorous operational strategy, proactive communication, and daily agility to ensure seamless execution and alignment. As a lead designer and sports fan, I was able to ideate and design solutions specific to the product’s demographic.

FINDING DELTAS, RE-USING COMPONENTS, & SCALING

Beyond unifying foundational tokens like typography and color, auditing existing components allowed us to evaluate overall system scalability. We established NFL sports cards—the most feature-dense and extensively designed components—as our baseline standard, then systematically adapted and scaled those patterns across all other sports ecosystems. Re-using existing formats nd components was critical to designing the most scalable system.

1. LIVE SCORE BY PERIOD

*Using football’s four-quarter score layout, simpler adjustments to the number of columns accounted for the differences in each sports time-period molecules.*

2. Player Highlight + Total Stats Card

The format across these sports stayed the same. Only research in the most relevant statistics per sport was needed.

3. Score Card

Golf scores, however, required designing a completely new format.

IDENTIFYING ANOMALIES & IDEATING

Not every card scaled so easily. While team sports like football, soccer, and hockey required straightforward updates to score columns, individual sports like golf demanded entirely new layout architectures. Through targeted research and iterative design, we crafted tailored UI solutions while strictly leveraging pre-established atomic components and systemic frameworks—ensuring every custom pattern remained instantly scalable for future sports offerings.

FANTASY FOR ALL

A WHOLE OTHER SUBSET

Fantasy account integration is a core pillar of the YouTube Sports experience. To seamlessly adapt external fantasy products into the YouTube ecosystem, we maximized component reuse by leveraging foundational design tokens and atomic elements. When sports-specific features required net-new visual assets—such as custom icons and status badges—we designed them strictly within YouTube's existing visual guidelines to maintain brand cohesion.

SPORTS-AGNOSTIC DESIGN

Although most of our work was for NFL Fantasy Football, we had to keep in mind how designs might scale to other sports such as Fantasy Soccer, Basketball, etc.

Matrices FOR COMPREHSIVE INVENTORY

🔴 Red pill: since there were two separate design teams for YouTube TV and the main YouTube app, design files were organized very differently. Finding a specific component was nearly impossible without a guided tour from that team’s designer. We created matrices organized by parent components, specific sports, card/statistics types, and atoms which were discoverable in a single Figma space—all linked to the proper foundational and local libraries. Every asset was directly tied to core foundational and local libraries, eliminating hunt-and-gather design work and ensuring component-level updates propagated globally.

🔵 A happier simulation was created for everyone including designers, engineers, product managers, et al. Below are just small snippets from a much larger but well-ordered matrix.

Variant Architecutre

Efficiency was integrated at the component-level as well. Variant options within cards allow for designers to easily change elements within cards for both rapid mock-up’s and final delivery.

EASILY SWITCH FROM Light TO Dark Mode

Easy Figma options to change color modes according to pre-established color systems

EASILY CHANGE SPORT, PLATFORM, BREAKPOINT/SIZE, AND MORE

Figma options to flip through sports, platform, breakpoints, states and other options

FIGMA Nerds will understand

To change player images, team and league logos, we set PNG images as pre-set color styles for rapid mock-up capability. Additionally, using player images with transparent backgrounds allowed us to change the background team color behind the portraits conveniently. This not only helps the engineering team write great code but also makes the images future-proof in case the player changes teams, which they often do.

RESULTS

By bringing YouTube Sports' separate design teams into one unified system, we turned a major operational bottleneck into a driver for growth. By establishing a shared source of truth, we eliminated systemic friction, slashed feature rollout times across engineering teams, and created a future-proof UI architecture for multiple products and devices.

This unified design framework directly powered YouTube’s expansion into live sports—seamlessly delivering flagship properties like NFL Sunday Ticket to over 1.3 million subscribers and supporting YouTube TV’s milestone growth past 10 million subscribers. With a unified component matrix capable of instantly adapting to real-time stats, YouTube Sports is now fully equipped to scale across new sports leagues, multi-device platforms, and the next generation of global sports broadcasting.

EXTRAS

Following our work on the core YouTube Sports product, we extended our focus to high-conversion, in-app marketing surfaces for YouTube’s OTT offerings including NFL Sunday Ticket and HBO Max. Collaborating closely with YouTube’s Growth and Foundations teams, we explored and prototyped diverse growth strategies—ranging from motion-rich video banners to clear pricing and discount architectures. Every variation was optimized to reduce subscription friction, boost engagement, and drive conversions.