My role
Senior UX Designer
Company
Years
OJv2 is a next-generation design system, designed to unify Web, iOS, and Android under a single scalable foundation. Built with Design Tokens and native Figma Variables, the system introduces a new visual identity, supports multiple customer segments, and enables local teams to extend the system while remaining aligned with global foundations.
More than a component library, OJv2 is the architecture that allows thousands of components to behave consistently across products, platforms, themes, and modes.
Disciplines involved (A-Z)
Product — Design — Development — Branding
The Challenge
ING's design ecosystem had grown into a collection of local design systems, component libraries, themes, and documentation maintained across countries, products, and platforms. While this enabled local flexibility, it also introduced inconsistencies, duplication, and increasing maintenance costs.
At the same time, a new visual identity required a more scalable foundation—one that could support global brand consistency, local needs, accessibility requirements, and future growth.
The challenge wasn't simply redesigning a component library. It was creating a design system architecture capable of serving thousands of designers, engineers, and and millions of component instances across Web, iOS, and Android.
The Opportunity
Instead of treating accessibility, theming, branding, and scalability as separate problems, we saw an opportunity to solve them through a shared architecture. The goal was to create a system that could adapt to different contexts without creating more maintenance overhead.The System
Behind the System
Problem statement
ING needed a way to scale design consistency across thousands of components, multiple platforms, customer segments, and local extensions—while introducing a new visual identity and ensuring accessibility by default.
Challenge #1
One Brand, Many realities
ING operates across multiple markets, customer segments, and digital products. Local teams had evolved their own design system extensions to solve local specific needs, resulting in fragmented experiences and duplicated effort. The challenge was finding the balance between global consistency and local flexibility without forcing every market into the same solution.
Challenge #2
Complexity at scale
The design system needed to support:
- customer segments
- Light and dark modes
- Cross-platform experiences
- Accessibility requirements
- Future visual identity updates
Challenge #3
Color was becoming a maintenance problem
Color was one of the most complex areas of the system. Designers needed ways to create emphasis, support storytelling, and express different brand personalities while remaining accessible and consistent.
Yet every new surface, theme, or mode dramatically increased the number of possible color combinations. The result was a growing dependency on manual decisions, reviews, and accessibility checks.
Accessible on
Brand components
Solution
We designed and launched OJv2—a unified design system built on design tokens, native Figma Variables, and a scalable architecture shared across Web, iOS, and Android. At the core of the system sits the Expressive Engine.
Rather than treating color as individual design decisions, Expressive transforms color into a system of relationships.
Designers no longer choose individual foreground and background colors. Instead, they choose intent. The system automatically generates accessible, on-brand color pairings based on:
- Surface context
- Customer segment themes
- Light and dark modes
- Semantic color roles
Expressive
Engine
A way of working
Expressive is an extension of the token architecture that brings personality, emphasis, and storytelling into the design system without sacrificing consistency. It enables components to automatically respond to:
- Surfaces — pairing background and foreground tokens
- Themes — Overall, Business, Private, Wholesale
- Modes — Light and Dark
- Accessibility rules — built directly into the combinations
Impact
- Unified component library across Web, iOS, and Android
- Fully tokenized architecture using Design Tokens and Figma Variables
- Built-in support for themes, modes, and future brand evolution
- Design-code parity through shared foundations
- Deprecation of fragmented local design systems
- Single workspace connecting global foundations and local extensions
- Accessible, scalable color combinations powered by the Expressive Engine
Adoption looked good on us
OJv2 powers over 24,000 design files, with more than 9 million components used across 32,000 files. Complex corporate setup, with multiple teams across 10 different countries, with more than 2000 active projects using the design system. Enterprise needs vs customer facing UIs.
The End
Delivered
- Design System Strategy
- Token Architecture
- Expressive engine
- Documentation Strategy
- Component Governance
- Cross-functional collaboration with Design, Brand and Engineering
Personal Note
In large, global companies, it's crucial to recognize that change occurs incrementally and can be challenging to implement. Celebrating small victories is essential to maintain momentum and encourage ongoing progress.
Featured work
UX and EyeCandy.
© All rights reserved. Images belong to the brands.