ZOLEO · Satellite communications
Role
Freelance product designer, design systems and tokens
Period
2022 to 2025
Scope
Token architecture, components, governance, app 6.7 and 6.8
ZOLEO’s design system was built for one product, the MyZOLEO web dashboard. It started on solid foundations from Samantha Gordashko, but the tokens were tied to that one product, the components no longer matched how Figma works, and documentation was spread across Figma, Confluence and a tool that has since shut down.
Then a legal dispute froze the budget, and the Tokens Studio license went with it.
Token architecture. Rebuilt as foundation, theme and component layers, with aliasing so changes flow down cleanly instead of being patched by hand.
Dimension tokens. One dimension token replaced separate size and spacing tokens, so there are fewer tokens to maintain.
Icon wrappers. Cut from five to one. Tokens set the icon size based on where the icon sits.
Typography. Text components for body, header and helper text, built on size, line height and weight tokens.
Components. Buttons, forms, tooltips and feedback brought up to current Figma standards and mapped into the Prismic CMS, so developers could pull them straight in.
Component
points to {xx-dimensions.5}
Theme
points to {size.4}
Foundation
16px
How one icon size resolves through the three token layers. xx stands in for the brand.
When the license went, I set up a versioned JSON token registry, wrote down the manual sync steps for Figma, and ran token updates asynchronously. The system stayed usable for the whole freeze.
I was brought back for six weeks to work with the product owner on the app.
Device linking. Support tickets showed people couldn’t tell whether Bluetooth, the device or the satellite link was working. I added status icons and a step-by-step progress bar. After a test with six users, I merged the icons into a single “fully connected” state.
Signal indicators. The old indicator was a one-pixel line. I replaced it with custom signal icons and a separate standby state, so power saving no longer looks like a dropped connection.
Satellite notice. I recommended an inline banner, reusing an existing MyZOLEO component, instead of another overlay competing with SOS alerts.
Location in messages (6.8). The timeline was cut mid-project, so we kept the existing backend and shipped the visual improvements on top.
A token architecture that kept working after its tooling was gone, components built to current Figma standards, and app patterns the planned redesign can build on.
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