Scaling 38 add-on service apps inside a single design system

CONTEXT

Verizon's digital product suite includes 38 discrete add-on service apps — each with its own feature set, but all required to feel like a single Verizon product. I worked within Verizon's established design system to maintain visual and interaction consistency across all 38 services.

After Verizon revamped its brand identity in 2016, the My Verizon App (MVA) that faces 110 million wireless subscribers needed to be refreshed to match and help express the brand. Verizon’s in-house design team and AKQA collaboratively created MVA’s new UI pattern library and remapped over 5500 pages.

PROBLEM

At that scale, design drift is inevitable without strict system governance. Individual service teams were making local decisions that diverged from the system — inconsistent spacing, overridden components, bespoke patterns that didn't translate across services.

APPROACH

I maintained a templated layout system for all 38 services — defining which components could be customised per service and which were locked. This created a clear contract between the design system and the individual teams: you can change the content, not the container.

For each new add-on service, I ran a design audit against the system baseline before handoff, flagging deviations and providing corrected specs. This reduced engineering rework and kept the system coherent at scale.

Instead of redesigning every single page of the entire app, we specified how original screens match up with the new design. During this process, we assessed the applicability of the design system, identified the gaps, and thus evolved it after evaluating on the needs. By doing that, we also specified some areas for optimization for the app experience.

OUTCOME

All 38 add-on services shipped with consistent visual and interaction patterns within the Verizon design system. Verizon reported $100B in revenue in 2022, with the digital product suite as a core customer touchpoint.

The new My Verizon App has the average rating of 4.6 out of 5.0 (2.2M ratings) in Apple App Store, and 4.0 out of 5.0 (365K+ ratings) in Google Play Store.

REFLECTION

Working within an existing system at this scale taught me that governance is a design problem, not just a process problem. The most effective constraint is one that makes the right choice the easiest choice.