tl;dr
Governed 4,300+ theme-able icons creation for dark mode.
Mentored 50+ designers on icon standards.
Built a team of 6 designers to review icons.
Participated in publishing 5 icon training videos.
Built an automated Figma icon checker plugin with Claude.
Hosted 100+ hours of icon office hours.
Developed bonds and trust across UX teams.
Before
๐ After
Stage 1: A theme-able Icon Design Guideline
I partnered with our Principal UX Designer Jason W. to develop a comprehensive icon design guide covering design and naming principles, specifications for all icon types (Toolstrip, App, Wide, Sidebar, File Type, and more), Figma setup, benchmarking practices, and the end-to-end workflow from icon creation to product delivery.
This became a foundational element of our design system. I'll share a few key principles that guide how we define and create our icons. If you're interested in learning more, feel free to ask. I could happily talk about icon design for hours.
Do use flat modern visual design
Don't use shadow or gradients
Do have a clearly distinguishable border
Do use semantic colors (e.g. --mw-graphics-colorOrder-1-primary) that work consistently across both modes.
Do create icons in two sizes to support both large and small use cases. (e.g. 50x40/20x16 for wide plot icons)
These design standards establish dozens of visual variables for each set of icons, creating a consistent visual language across MATLAB and related products.
Stage 2: Developed Educational Onboarding Materials to Boost Confidence
By surveying designers' confidence in icon creation, I discovered that design guidelines alone were not enough to help everyone create effective icons with confidence. In response, I launched an initiative to develop supporting tools, training materials, and educational resources that enabled UX designers to design icons more consistently and independently.
Organized and facilitated organization-wide live training sessions.
Partnered with video creation team to ship 5 training videos on main concepts.
Stage 3: Training Reviewers and Hosting Office Hours to Scale Knowledge Across the Organization
The best way to ensure icon quality is to invest time in people.
I built and led a team of 5โ6 Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to review and approve icon designs. I believe the best way to learn is by teaching others, and that principle applied not only to me but to every SME on the team.
To spread knowledge across the organization, I rotated SME membership annually and provided mentoring throughout the process. This helped designers become confident not only in creating high-quality icons, but also in coaching and teaching others.
Hosted weekly sign-up office hours to answer icon design questions, provide guidance, and review real-world design cases.
Stage 4: Building a Figma Plugin with Agentic AI to Reduce Manual Effort
This year, I began exploring agentic AI tools to automate many of the manual checks required by our icon design guidelines. I built a Figma validation plugin with Claude that automatically verifies stroke widths, pixel alignment, approved colors, naming conventions, and other design requirements.
Instead of relying solely on memory and manual reviews, designers can now receive immediate feedback directly within Figma, making the icon creation process faster, more consistent, and less error-prone.
Figma plugin to automate design standard checks
Beyond Icons: Building a Design Community
I am proud to have led this program and contributed to the quality and consistency of our icon ecosystem over the past several years. While publishing one of our largest Figma libraries was both exciting and intimidating, the most rewarding part was connecting with designers across UX, learning about their domains, and helping them grow their icon design skills with confidence.
Generative AI was used exclusively for copy editing and readability improvements