Project Pangea was a large-scale platform unification effort, bringing the CBS Sports and CBS News CTV apps onto a single, scalable codebase. The objective was clear: reduce duplication, accelerate feature delivery, and establish a consistent experience across Roku, Apple TV, Android TV, Fire TV, and Smart TVs.
I partnered closely with design systems and product leadership throughout the initiative and owned the product design workflow end to end, spanning research, UX definition, prototyping, design QA, and rollout in collaboration with engineering. Pangea was more than a redesign; it was a structural shift that enabled faster shipping, shared standards, and confident feature scaling across multiple brands.
Unified Navigation and Information Architecture
A single, shared navigation structure aligning CBS Sports and CBS News, creating a clear foundation for consistency, scalability, and faster feature rollout across platforms.
From Fragmented to Unified Components
A core content component before and after alignment, showing how fragmented patterns were consolidated into one clear, reusable system.
Shared Layout DNA
Sports and News experiences built on the same layout rhythm, proving that different content can live on a common structural foundation.
Brand Alignment Without Loss of Identity
A unified layout expressed through distinct brand tones, preserving the character of each product while aligning the system underneath.
Platform Integration Overview
A high-level view of how shared components render across Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, and Android TV. This demonstrated how a single codebase could scale cleanly across platforms without sacrificing clarity or quality.
The Challenge
Two products. Two codebases. Limited scalability.
CBS Sports and CBS News evolved independently over years — with separate components, navigation patterns, engineering teams, and product roadmaps. New features often had to be designed and built twice, making quality, consistency, and velocity increasingly difficult to maintain. Pangea set out to change this by establishing a unified foundation: shared patterns, shared components, shared navigation structures, and a single codebase powering both apps. The core challenge was bringing two distinct brand identities and product histories together without flattening their differences or confusing their audiences.
Building the Unified System
Designing components that could serve two brands at scale without increasing engineering overhead.
At the heart of Pangea was systemization. Every component needed to be flexible enough to support both Sports and News, while remaining strict enough to keep engineering velocity high. Each decision was evaluated against three non-negotiable criteria:
→ Does it scale across both brands without modification?
→ Does it behave consistently across all CTV platforms?
→ Does it reduce engineering overhead rather than add to it?
This led to a rethinking of core building blocks, including content rails and discovery rows, video player metadata and interactions, navigation patterns and focus states, visual hierarchy and layout spacing, typography and motion rules, and content detail pages and live modules. Once the system was defined, I worked closely with engineering to ensure precise translation into production, through implementation reviews, QA sessions, and cross-platform validation.
Shared Component Library (CTV-First)
A unified CTV component library established a single foundation for Sports and News, standardizing rows, cards, navigation, and focus states. This reduced duplicated effort across teams and enabled faster, more predictable feature delivery.
Interaction & Focus Model
CTV interaction patterns were redefined around a clear focus model, directional navigation, and motion feedback. Focus behavior, scaling, and transitions were designed to feel predictable, responsive, and native across remote-driven devices.
Tokenized States & Theming
Live content cards mapped to shared design tokens, aligning selection states, color, and spacing. This approach enabled consistent theming and behavior across brands with minimal implementation overhead.
Media Components Across Brands
Core media components were shared across Sports and News while allowing content expression to remain distinct. Headlines, thumbnails, and metadata adapt by brand, while the underlying system rules stay the same.
QA & UAT in Practice
Detailed specs, annotated prototypes, and design-to-build comparisons ensured fidelity from concept through release. QA and UAT workflows helped align design, product, and engineering during rollout across Roku, Apple TV, and Smart TV platforms.
Applied Work & Feature Launches
Launching Pangea — and Everything That Came After
Once the unified codebase shipped, I led the design for new cross-brand features — proving the value of the system immediately:
→ Video Discovery Row (massive engagement lift)
→ Top 10 Ranking Row
→ Branded Rows for Content Partners
→ Live Stream Enhancements & Metadata Improvements
These new features could now be designed once and activated in multiple apps — exactly what Pangea was built for.
Discovery Row 2.0
With the unified platform in place, I led the next iteration of the Discovery Row — refining hierarchy, motion, and personalization within the player experience. Built on the shared system, the feature could ship simultaneously across Sports and News, validating Pangea's goal of faster, scalable delivery.
CBS News CTV Home
Unified experience, live in market. A clean, structured home built on the shared system, bringing consistent navigation, spacing, and focus behavior to live, opinion, and trending content.
CBS Sports CTV Home
One system, distinct expression. The same components power a more energetic layout, using sports-specific rhythm, scores, and branding without breaking structural consistency.
Player Discovery Row
Extending engagement at the moment that matters. A contextual discovery row layered into the full-screen player, introducing recommended clips through subtle motion and clear hierarchy.
Top Ten Row
A modular feature built to scale. A reusable ranking component with clear visual rhythm, designed for fast scanning and flexible deployment across sports and news contexts.
Branded Row · UFC
Premium brand integration, system-first. A branded content row that introduces UFC identity through restrained color and accents, staying expressive without overpowering the UI.
Branded Rows · Masters & Champions League
Rapid adaptation across leagues and events. The same branded row pattern tuned for different tournaments, demonstrating how quickly the system flexes while preserving cohesion.
Launch Across CTV Platforms
Shipped consistently, everywhere. Final builds running across Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, and Android TV, confirming the system's reliability at scale and in real-world conditions.
Outcomes & Reflection
Pangea fundamentally changed how CBS shipped products.
It turned two disconnected apps into one scalable platform — cutting redundancy, strengthening brand alignment, and enabling faster innovation. It also reshaped cross-functional collaboration: design, product, and engineering could now build from the same foundation.
For me, Pangea reinforced the importance of systemized thinking and hands-on execution. It required leading across design, prototyping, UAT, and engineering delivery — and strengthened my ability to build multi-platform products that scale without losing clarity or creativity.