Network TV anywhere.
Creating a design system for dozens of apps.
NBC Universal wanted us to create a suite of apps for their channels, including Bravo, NBC News, SyFy, Telemundo, and USA for Xbox One and Windows Phone. The idea was to use a single actively-developed Git submodule to "feed" all these apps while simultaneously developing a UI for each brand to express its own identity.
To accomplish this, I developed a set of LESS (a CSS preprocessor) functions to feed in channel-specific branding and UI quickly and easily. Using the parameters for the app UX set by our design team and working with the channels' brand managers, I created cascading functions based on a core set of brand color values and their color darkness thresholds to customize the UI for each app on each platform. This resulted in an entire UI that could be branded in 5 minutes using only eight variables, including typeface, primary and secondary brand color values and other details we could collect via email from brand managers. This allowed the development team to devote time to optimizing the apps for best performance, and take time away from implementing redundant UI patterns.
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