Role: Strategic Design Lead (M3 Manager, Brand Experience)

Timeline: 2023 – 2025

Collaborators: Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Design (PEMD), plus C-Suite Executive Leadership

Deliverables: Brand Architecture, Operational Frameworks, Emerging Tech (AI/LLM) Integration

Unifying Brand and Product Ecosystems at Scale

Understand Challenge

Despite being the most preferred brand in the real estate category, Zillow's digital ecosystem suffered from a fragmented brand imprint. The product experience had become overly utilitarian, cold, and visually inconsistent, creating a massive gap between Creative Services and Experience Design. The challenge was to bridge this gap, modernizing a legacy interface into an approachable, accessible system without breaking muscle memory for millions of users.

Before & After (Refresh): A fragmented brand imprint suffering from inconsistent typography, dense layouts, and a utilitarian feel. Transformed into robust design token styles, instructive prototypes and guidelines for product builders.

Vision & Strategy

We didn't just want to paint a fresh coat of blue over the app; we needed a cohesive brand personality that scaled. By mapping our design attributes to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we designed the system to guide users through the emotional journey of real estate: from the inspiration of Dreaming (Joyful/Vibrant) to the security of Transacting (Dependable).

*Framing brand personality with psychological coherence.*

*Creating shared language to articulate ‘how we present ourselves’ as a brand.*

Using visual attributes to align on a new creative direction.

*Also, Zillow legacy look and feel was dated and not evoking the sense of high stakes trust required for users to consider transaction.*

Rearchitect the System

To empower cross-functional teams to deliver quality at scale, I directed the creation of a fully tokenized design architecture (CCMS). We replaced non-distinct, inaccessible colors with a WCAG "AA" compliant palette featuring a new modern blue and deep evergreen foundation. Typography was overhauled with a fully responsive grid, replacing inflexible, corporate fonts with a bold, readable hierarchy optimized for both dark and light modes.

*Establishing a fully responsive type grid for dynamic data.*

*Refreshed typography example specimens from documentation.*

*Expanding the palette to ensure WCAG "AA" compliance and seamless dark mode integration.*

*Refreshed color palette for email, web and native apps.*

Operationalize & Ship

A design system is only as successful as its adoption. To synchronize our Product, Engineering, and Marketing teams, I authored the VR PEMD Rollout Guide, effectively standardizing cross-platform governance for legacy refreshes. Furthermore, to future-proof our brand compliance, I pioneered a cutting-edge partnership with Replit to build a headless, AI-agent-powered documentation site, drastically reducing friction for developers and designers alike.

Impact

Launched initially as a "do-no-harm" experiment to ensure stability, the Zillow 2.0 Visual Refresh fundamentally transformed user engagement across all platforms, driving double-digit growth in both product conversion and brand sentiment.

+39%

Increase in Home Loan Submissions

+19%

Lift in Homepage Click-Through Rate (CTR)