OKX
OKX is a global cryptocurrency exchange application on mobile and web. Similar to Coinbase, Robinhood, and many others. They are headquartered in California & Singapore. With additional teams operating out of Turkey, Ireland, Beijing, and more.
The OKX app itself operates on Mobile and Web, and has two distinct design organizations working on Lite and Advanced modes.
My Role: Senior Product Designer II, Global Design Systems
The design systems team at OKX is comprised of 4 high level IC designers reporting directly to the Head of Design in the US and China. This team leverages the centralized infrastructure engineering team for development.
Team management duties such as reporting, roadmap prioritization, and project planning are handled communaly by DS team members in a collaborative and democratic fashion.
This team and the work produced is known as OKDS. (OK Design Systems)
Toolbox: Figma, Lark, Jira, Tables, Slides, Sheets, Docs.
My Responsibilities:
Development and ownership of Figma component libraries to enable internal design consistency across product features
Creation and maintenance of internal analytics measuring the adoption of Figma design assets and implementation by design contributors.
Dashboard analytics tracking the adoption of design system implementation in code by squad engineers.
Providing usage documentation, design guidelines, and build specification for engineer and product design reference of design system assets.
Conducting and participating in Interviews for design hires on product teams as well as internally to the design system team.
ADHOC feature design support for projects with high velocity/short timelines based on shifting legal requirements or other high priority directives from chief leadership.
Development and ownership of foundational design elements such as color, typography, iconography, spacing within a centralized library in Figma.
Championing internal design consistency to support feature teams comprised of 160+ Designers globally
Providing guidance based on a holistic and comprehensive understanding of design patterns across the OKX ecosystem
Collaboration in Jira to address bugs on the live experience, and progress of active design initiatives with cross functional partners.
Quarterly Roadmaps of OKDS development priorities and project tracking
Concise upwards reporting of OKDS initiative progress and project completion.
OKDS Figma Overview
A brief glance at the OKDS libraries for Design foundations, components, and documentation. The work on these libraries began in July 2023, and have since been scaled by a team of 4 in various capacities.
The OKDS Foundation Library hosts values and token details for design element such as Colors, Typography, Spacing & More. Additionally visual assets such as product illustrations and Icongraphy.
A collaborative team effort, my direct ownership and development focused on the core palette tokens, iconography, radius, and spacing.
The OKDS App component library hosts all the building blocks for pages across the OKX design ecosystem. Buttons, Bottomsheets, chips, tabs and many more.
My direct contributions equate to ~40% of the component designs shown here, the layout template used throughout pages, and the mirrored development of these components in code.
The OKDS Documentation library contains spec level details, and usage guidelines for all OKDS assets in use by the desgn and engineerings throughout OKX.
My contributions to this file equate to ~75% of documentation, spec, and guidelines throughout.
Working at OKX
OKX is a very flat company. the ds team reports directly to the head of design on highlights and important updates, and operates in a largely autonomous and asynchronous fashion otherwise due to the dispersed geolocation of its members.
The OKDS core team meets once a week for internal updates and high-level review.
Twice a week the OKDS core team meets with the infrastructure engineering team to submit build requests, QA assets and review completed work.
My role inside of team focused on documentation, component and foundation development, live testing, asset optimization, and metrics reporting based on figma and database analytics.
Outside of the DS team, I was an active support resource for the US based Feature team product designers and engineers. Providing design guidance, insights, and project approvals as liaison for the OKDS team.
A given week will consist of:
5-10 1:1’s with designers to review or troubleshoot design deliverables
Hands-on code review with squad engineers to confirm token or component implementations
Figma development of components, documentation, style upgrades, adhoc feature design work.
Metrics recording and transposition to tables and sheets for tracking
Live presentations or the building of.
Jira reviews of live experience bugs, and curation of our internal ticket tracking.
QA of new development releases to insure design consistency across features, IOS and Android.
Experience
Working at OKX has been a tremendous growth enabler for my career. Having already established myself as a talented designer and master of all things Figma, OKX has provided me the opportunity to grow in my capacities to mentor designers, and manage project prioritization and deliverables at a high level. Additionally the autonomous nature of our team has grown my ability to self-motivate and prioritize high impact work. I look forward to where this evolution brings me next.