Brand glue
One coherent language across Astrodata’s website, proposals, decks, sales material, and product.
Portfolio · 2026Audible · Visual Experience
MatiaWagabaza
Principal Product Designer · Visual Systems · Builder
HelloAudible · Visual Experience
I’ve spent my career designing visual experiences for consumer media and storytelling brands. With design changing faster than it ever has, I’d like the next chapter to be more considered.
I started in game design, as a 2D and 3D artist, then some of the early design-forward websites, making the screen feel alive when most of the web didn’t. The through-line ever since: visually rich, dynamic experiences that make something complex or unfamiliar feel inviting.
Sapient · Design Manager across San Francisco, London, and New Delhi.
Yahoo · Design Director across Entertainment, Music, and Video.
Sony Pictures Television Networks · VP of UX across Crackle, Animax, and Sony Networks.
Today I run my own studio, Wagabaza, where the last five years have been rapid: problem in, solution out, next one up.
What pulls me to Audible is the medium. The experience is audio, and the design job is to make it feel rich and welcoming without ever competing with the listening. That’s a genuinely hard, genuinely interesting problem, and where I’d like to keep developing: at depth, not velocity.
The Framework
BreadthAcross the Board
Across the board.
Agency & in-house · enterprise & startup · consumer & B2B
Across the Board
TodayThree Case Studies
What I’ll show you
The problem → the approach → the move → the payoff
001 — Design System
The Astrodata System
A configurable design language that became the brand glue across their comms.
002 — Product
Axiom
A healthcare command center designed end-to-end.
003 — Side Practice
Soccer Curious
A podcast brand I designed and built — and why this role caught my attention.
~28 MINUTES PRESENTATION / ~30 MINUTES Q&A
Agenda
001 — Design SystemThe Astrodata System
001 — DESIGN SYSTEM
The Astrodata
System
One configurable design language — the brand glue across every surface.
001 — Astrodata DSThe Brand Glue
The problem · fragmented comms
Many surfaces.
One language.
Astrodata’s communications were drifting — website, client proposals, pitch decks, sales materials, product demos, each evolving on its own. A senior consultancy that looked inconsistent everywhere a prospect touched it.
So I redesigned the entire suite: website, proposals, decks, demos. One visual language, unmistakably Astrodata on every surface. Here’s the journey.
FIG. 01 — astrodata.us · the previous design expression
001 — Astrodata DSOne System, Every Surface
The approach · the journey
THE WEBSITE
The public face.
astrodata.us — the marketing site. Partner logos, the data-viz motif, the whole front door, built from the system.
CLIENT PROPOSAL
A bespoke proposal.
A confidential client proposal as its own microsite — same language, an editorial dark treatment. The pitch becomes an experience, not a PDF.
PITCH & SALES
Pitch and sales material.
Investor- and client-facing decks carrying the identical visual language — so every touchpoint reads as one firm.
THE PRODUCT
And the product.
The system even underpins AXIOM, the flagship demo — we’ll dig into it shortly.
- •01The Website
- •02Client Proposal
- •03Pitch & Sales
- •04The Product
001 — Wagabaza DSLive Demo
The move · live
Let me show you
the system.
Astrodata is data analysts and data engineers — not one designer. The brand had to survive without me. So I didn’t hand them guidelines. I built them a tool.
One token engine, many outputs. They configure; the system generates; the brand holds — with enough range that it never goes stale.
FIG. 02 — The engine · configure place, time, season, weather
001 — Astrodata DSValidation Through Integration
The payoff · validation through integration
A system earns trust not in a lab, but by surviving contact with real production.
A
B
In the workflow
Engineers extract the tokens straight into builds and into Claude Code — packaged as a reusable frontend skill-set that spins up new sites from any directory.
C
Still evolving
The system keeps proving and refining itself as new client contexts stress it.
And the same system became the foundation for Astrodata’s flagship product demo — which is where we go next.
002 — ProductAxiom
002 — PRODUCT
Axiom
A high-risk patient command center demo for the healthcare sector.
002 — AxiomThe Brief
The problem · the brief
Partner tech.
One product.
Take the partner stack — Tuva (clinical data model), Snowflake Cortex (AI/ML), Omni (embedded BI), dbt underneath — and make it feel like one opinionated, healthcare-grade product.
Two hard deadlines. Audience: healthcare executives. Stretch goal: present alongside Omni’s CEO at a Databricks conference.
FIG. 02 — Population Health · Cortex risk stratification, partners integrated
002 — AxiomThe Re-Scope
The approach · solving the right problem
I started building a product. The real job was a sales tool — and the craft was making it honestly do both.
The wrong problem
My first instinct was to build it as an actual product — and I went too deep, designing for edge cases and states no demo would ever need. I caught myself solving the wrong problem.
The re-scope
Stepped back: the job was a sales tool that showcases the technologies and Astrodata’s expertise in bringing them together. The challenge became making it feel like a credible product and function as an honest pitch — neither a hollow demo nor an over-built app.
The Re-Scope
002 — AxiomBelievability
The approach · believability was the mechanism
The hard part was never the dashboard. It was making the partner technologies feel like one product — credible to the people who know this work cold.
The real problem
A sales tool that also had to convince working care managers it was a real, opinionated product. If the workflow felt fake, the whole partnership pitch collapsed. Believability was the sales mechanism.
How I kept it honest
Full design process across system, features, and interactions — with a working care manager and a clinical SME (Kelechi) as sounding boards every round, so the story never drifted from how the work actually happens. The framework stayed flexible enough to simplify the narrative — cutting two personas to one — without rebuilding the product.
Believability
002 — AxiomThe Product, Screen by Screen
The move · screen by screen
POPULATION DASHBOARD
Sarah’s morning view.
Risk density across her whole panel — Cortex anomaly detection surfaces where costs are spiking and where to look first.
+ BLOBBY
Two agents, one conversation.
Ask in plain language, get an answer without leaving the screen. Blobby queries; the Axiom layer acts — orchestrated to feel like one assistant.
COHORT ANALYSIS
The drill-down.
Why a cohort’s spend is climbing, which service categories drive it, and which handful of patients account for most of it.
PATIENT WORKLIST
Who to call today.
An ML-ranked queue ordered by Cortex readmission probability — instead of gut instinct.
PATIENT PROFILE
One patient, whole picture.
Risk score, conditions, claims timeline, open care gaps — with an AI narrative summary on top.
CARE PATHWAY
Insight to action.
Select an intervention template, see projected risk and cost impact, approve and deploy in one click.
- •01Dashboard
- •02+ Blobby
- •03Cohort
- •04Worklist
- •05Profile
- •06Care Pathway
002 — AxiomThe Engineering
The move · design-to-code, end to end
I don’t hand off Figma files.
I ship the product.
React / Vite → Next.js
Migrated the prototype to a production Next.js app so it could absorb the Omni iframe cleanly and embed into Astrodata’s marketing surface. Run from my own repo with Vercel auto-deploy; collaborator PRs reviewed and merged through my workflow.
AXIOM voice inside Omni
Omni’s text and markdown tiles support inline HTML/CSS, so the dashboards carry the AXIOM language â typography, color, hierarchy â rather than the BI vendor’s signature. Cross-iframe interactions wired through postMessage.
The Engineering
002 — AxiomWhat It Became
The payoff · what it became
- Closed deals off the first sharing. Astrodata and Omni both converted business directly from this demo.
- A reusable pattern — the AXIOM design language inside Omni tiles via inline HTML/CSS — for future embedded analytics work.
- A clean handoff to Astrodata’s production engineering team, including a demo-mode toggle that replaces auto-start.
Reflection
Visual design at scale is knowing
what to remove.
The work was about removing things — and keeping the story honest — until what was left felt inevitable to the people who know this domain cold.
Outcomes & Reflection
003 — Side PracticeSoccer Curious
003 — SIDE PRACTICE
Soccer
Curious
The Beautiful Game, Explained. A podcast brand I designed and built.
003 — Soccer CuriousThe Brand
The problem · the premise
The Beautiful Game,
Explained.
A podcast for Americans newly curious about soccer ahead of the 2026 World Cup. Brian Falk hosts; I’m the designer and developer.
The challenge I set myself: build a whole brand and product surface solo — for a medium you can’t see. Identity, site, content, community, and the publishing pipeline.
FIG. 04 — Homepage · latest episode hero
003 — Soccer CuriousThe Whole Stack
The move · the journey
HOME
Serious. But also ridiculous.
The whole brand in one tension: retro-athletic palette, jersey-italic type, and a mustard highlighter that annotates the sport. The latest episode plays right here.
EXPLAINERS
The on-ramp.
The show’s educational mission as clear doors — basics, laws, glossary. Welcoming, not lecturing. Nobody gets to feel dumb.
WHERE TO WATCH
Remove the friction.
The newcomer’s actual first question, answered plainly: where is the game on, and what does it cost to watch.
SCHEDULE
Scoreboard energy.
The World Cup, day by day, in monospace ticker style — real urgency without breaking the playful tone.
COMMUNITY
The group chat, upgraded.
Watch parties and fellow newcomers. Just like your group chat, but with better microphones.
- •01Home
- •02Explainers
- •03Where to Watch
- •04Schedule
- •05Community
003 — Soccer CuriousWhy I Built It
The payoff · why I built it
There’s something specific about designing
for a medium where the words live
in someone’s ears.
The visual language has to support listening, not interrupt it. The brand has to feel like the show sounds. I’ve been thinking about that problem on my own time — and I’d like to do more of it.
Why I Built It
CloseWhat I’m Looking For
What I’m looking for
The chance to do
this work
inside a brand whose mission
I actually care about.
Visual systems. Product design. Hands-on craft. Inside a brand at the intersection of visual experience and audio storytelling — where the bar is unusually high and the medium is genuinely interesting.
Thank you
Q&AThank you
Thank you for your time.
EndMatia Wagabaza · 2026
Thank you for your time.
matia@wagabaza.com · portfolio.wagabaza.com · design.wagabaza.com
End