Informed
World-class journalism from the world's most renowned news publishers, humanly curated into one subscription.
Role
Product Design Lead
I led the Informed product design team from closed beta to public launch.
During this time, I initiated and led numerous organisational changes and product features. Including, a total overhaul of the design files organisation into a design system family; The conversion from a closed 'log in only' system to an open 'browse for free' app; The creation of offline reading mode; Article summaries; And the responsive web app.
I created the Informed Design System Family which provides continuity across five touch points — Mobile App, Responsive Web, Email, Social Media, and Paid Marketing. A robust and well-organised collection of design files enables the various teams and the business to quickly iterate ideas built on a solid and well-documented foundation of design tokens, atoms, molecules and organisms.
Colour themes — and the launch of dark mode — were a very popular feature to come from a full overhaul of the Mobile App Design System.
The Informed mobile app has three card variations. I redesigned and optimised the layout of each for an excellent reading experience, improved clarity of secondary and tertiary information, and continuity via the definition of design tokens like border-radius, spacing, iconography, and the typographic scale.
The Informed Design Systems Family allows each department in the business the freedom to do things their way. Whilst providing a rigid set of rules, guidance, helpers and shortcuts to retain continuity across all visual outputs from the business.
I led the conversion of the platform from a closed 'log in only' system to an open 'try before you buy' experience. This created three possible states for the user experience — Guest, Free and Premium user — with various user journeys and tactics to nudge the customer towards the Premium tier.
Offline Mode was another of my initiatives and became a Premium tier feature.
Any premium article that the user manually 'saves for later' is downloaded – ready for offline reading. Additionally, a full week's worth of articles featured in the personalised Daily Brief are automatically downloaded in the background for catching up on important World news during offline periods.
As part of my overhaul of the responsive web app, I was able to carry over many of the visual bells and whistles and newly established design patterns from the mobile app. This unified the user experience between the web and mobile apps, reducing confusion during the most common user conversion flow.
