PRODUCT STRATEGY + DESIGN. UX/UI. CREATIVE DIRECTION
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Newsweek is America’s leading weekly magazine and is recognized for its world class journalism, its forward thinking design and photography. Newsweek publications can be viewed online, via Google AMP, Apple News, the native app and of course in print. At Newsweek Media Group I built and managed the product team and oversaw all of user experience, design and digital strategy across all products.
The Challenge
Newsweek.com provides in-depth analysis, news and opinion about world issues, technology, business, culture and politics. The primary mission was to create simple and empowering interactions that offers a fluid and revealing experiences cross platform.
Goals
Redefine the brand mission, editorial objectives, and target audience
Develop a content strategy that that leverages key content types (news, features, opinions et al.), media types (articles, videos, live streams, podcasts, and more) and topical taxonomy.
Build an experience that centers on branded properties and related content that foster increased engagement and ad views.
Define KPIs based on building an engaged, endemic audience.
Create a stronger social media presence leveraging Newsweek Media's publishing platform to increase engagement with audiences
Create new advertising models (branded content and native advertising).
Launch on alternative news platforms (Google AMP and
Apple News)
Apple News)
Build out relaunch and go-to-market plans, including, redesign, platform strategy, business, and marketing plans.
Interaction Design
Delivering a best-in-class, engaging news experience was priority number one for the relaunch of this icon brand. The product team worked within in a truly agile process, keeping the strategy in focus, crafting an outstanding user experience, developing new content categories and completely rein-visioning new advertising models. We were able to create efficiencies, validate concepts via prototyping/user testing and developed platform architecture and technology innovations. All of this was done while keeping the focus on seamless content delivery and relevance.
Mobile
Having a detailed picture of our core users, we understood mobile platforms needed to be the place we stared the user experience design. Not only was the entire experience designed in a modular fashion, allowing for custom layouts and promotions but the mobile design was adapted to larger screens creating a true platform-agnostic approach to the overall design of the product.
User Experience & Testing
Wireframes using simulated rich-media and editorial content were generated throughout the entire design process, allowing us to make more accurate design decisions rapidly without holding up project flow. User testing was done remotely, plus with focus groups in testing facilities using low and high fidelity prototypes. Findings were evaluated, interactions were adjusted and incorporated into final designs. Comprehensive wireframes were created to simulate all desktop and mobile advertising scenarios and further tested using live A/B testing.
The Result
Since its launch, Newsweek.com has enjoyed rapid growth in traffic and overall engagement.
• 8 month project lifecycle to launch
• Re-platform & launch of Newsweek.com
• Created a rich UX experience tailored for content consumption
• Created new advertising strategy & modules
• Created a product-centered taxonomy / database
• Created Apple News & Google AMP experiences
• Increase social engagement
• Created a global design system
• Recipient of a Silver Communicator Award
• Re-platform & launch of Newsweek.com
• Created a rich UX experience tailored for content consumption
• Created new advertising strategy & modules
• Created a product-centered taxonomy / database
• Created Apple News & Google AMP experiences
• Increase social engagement
• Created a global design system
• Recipient of a Silver Communicator Award
