Creating the new digital home of a leading international publication
Overview
The Economist is a weekly newspaper providing expert analysis and commentary on the world we live in. In 2015, the publication decided to modernize their online platform and offer a more engaging reading experience. I joined their London-based team as a Product Designer to contribute to this initiative and help redesign economist.com.
Challenge
The Economist required a new digital platform for a few reasons. Firstly, the aesthetics of their website were outdated, which failed to attract new readers and advertisers. Moreover, the content was organized to mirror the print publication's structure, which created confusion instead of coherence for readers. We conducted several workshops before establishing a product vision and structure for the new website.
Approach
Our initial site concept prioritized designing a set of core components for key user journeys. We collaborated with our partner agency to develop a versatile design system that preserved the brand's personality while allowing editors to present a diverse range of content, including news articles, leadership blogs, research, and reports, in a logical manner. Of course, the system had to be modular enough to accommodate future expansion and use.
We utilized React to build the new website, which proved to be an excellent platform for collaboration between designers and developers. React's component-based structure allowed us to break down the UI into design elements such as buttons, forms, form fields, spinners, and more, making it easy to iterate and evolve the design system directly in code. Using these reusable and modular building blocks, we created all the key page types and successfully launched the new economist.com.
