Design System Rebrand Strategy + ImplementationAdopting Tokens and Figma Variable Modes, I successfully aligned and evolved Change Healthcare’s legacy B2B system to meet Optum’s enterprise standards. This helped increase adoption, improve accessibility and speed to market while keeping product timelines intact.
Bringing Change to Optum
ROLESenior Product Designer, Design Systems Lead
Team1 Engineer, 1 Brand Representative, 1 Product Director
Scope3 libraries, 50+ components, 12+ teams, 30+ products
As the sole Design Systems lead at Change Healthcare, I maintained a mature, widely adopted legacy system. After the Optum acquisition, our products needed to align quickly with a new enterprise brand, accessibility expectations, and a tokenized ecosystem. This meant collaborating closely with new partners across brand, accessibility, UX, and engineering, rapidly building trust and rapport, learning their standards, and establishing shared alignment before any system decisions could move forward.
OverviewThe ProblemOur design system was built for a small, fast‑moving organization, but acquisition brought us into a much larger enterprise ecosystem with new standards, expectations, and ways of working. The challenge was adapting our mature, widely used system to meet enterprise requirements quickly and responsibly—without slowing teams already shipping work or disrupting the product roadmap.
ConsiderationsCracking the Brand Code
I needed to understand how their style guide was architected; its visual logic, naming patterns, and foundational principles. That insight would be essential for aligning our legacy system and reducing friction as we adapted it into their ecosystem.
Translating Styles Into Tokens
Our legacy system lived entirely in Figma styles, while theirs was fully tokenized. Bridging that gap meant understanding how to build a translation layer that respected both systems’ logic and set us up for long‑term scalability.
Learning the Language of Tokens
Tokens were new territory for our team, so part of the upfront work was understanding how they flowed through Figma, documentation, and code. I needed to absorb that knowledge quickly to ensure the rebrand strategy was grounded in token‑based thinking.
Supporting Every Timeline
More than a dozen product teams were operating on different timelines, each with its own readiness for change. I needed to anticipate a rollout flexible enough to meet teams where they were without compromising consistency.
Managing the In‑Between State
I needed to understand how a period of coexistence between the legacy library and rebranded components might impact designers and workflows. At the outset, this dual‑system phase appeared to be the most reliable path for a predictable transition.
Guiding Designers Through Change
This transition was the biggest style change our product designers had ever experience beyond a simple style library swap. I needed to anticipate the level of support designers would require once the rebrand rolled out.
The approachAudit + Alignment
Assess both ecosystems to understand gaps, constraints, and where enterprise standards required structural updates.
Collaborative Decisions
Partner with brand designers to resolve mismatches and secure alignment on naming, logic, and scalable patterns.
Structured Transition
Update the legacy library and built a parallel style set to map changes.
Adaptive Strategy
Shift to a Variables‑based Mode approach, enabling teams to toggle between legacy and new branding without disruption.
Designer Support
Created a practical rebrand guide to help designers implement changes confidently and navigate friction points.