About
I take the things I love apart to see how they're built. It's been the same instinct since I was hand-coding fan sites.
I'm Marissa Klymkiw and I lead design systems in Los Angeles. That first fan site was for Sailor Moon, on GeoCities, around 1999: a navigation scheme, a color system, reusable pieces copied page to page. I didn't know those were design-system ideas. I just knew it had to be right.
Now it's the patterns ~20 product teams rely on, with no authority over any of them. Accessibility, reusable components, and the structure that lets other teams build without re-solving the same problems. The scale changed. The wiring didn't.
The same obsession points at other things. A book collection with a stricter taxonomy than most design systems I've audited. A Beatles collection that started early and never stopped. A Hobonichi, because structure is something I do for fun. If you want the work version, the case studies are here.
- Based
- Los Angeles area
- Still obsessed with
- The Beatles, books, a Hobonichi
- Currently reading
- The Disappearers by Marlon James
Where I've built design systems
2014–2019SoCalGasRebuilt the customer website and set the standards the org built on.
2019–2022USCBuilt the design system Experience USC and Guest Access used.
2022–2024IndeedSet the data-visualization standards aligning UX across Indeed's enterprise hiring teams at marketplace scale.
2024–CurrentUCLAScaling it enterprise-wide through a cross-org partnership, piloting AI-powered design to codify patterns campus teams will build on.
What I work on
- Design systems
- Governance and adoption
- Accessibility
- AI-native workflows
- Platform design
Industries
- Higher education
- HR technology
- Energy and utilities