A bite-sized daily news app for iOS & Android delivering a short, sharp shot of news in the morning. The first daily news offering in the company’s 175 year history. I delivered the UX & Design piece for this project, working agile alongside Pivotal Labs.
The Economist has a fairly complex subscription model. One of the major challenges with this project was creating a good user experience transitioning from the freemium entry point to upselling a subscription or determining if the app was covered in your current subscription.
The rest of the app was mostly about delivering a smooth reading experience that was as frictionless as possible whilst supporting the app advertising/sponsorship requirements. We stress tested layouts with a wide array of content and languages. Small moments of joy were added via animation and rewards for being a completionist.
The editorial team were spinning up during development so they could launch with experience of supporting the content needs, whilst feeding back into the design process. One of the unique challenges on this project was contributing to the editorial team structure and process based on the UX that we wanted to deliver.
The project was delivered using an agile process in conjunction with their selected development partner Pivotal Labs. I embedded myself into the team and worked about a week ahead with my team to keep the pipeline fed. An MVP was launched to the public within 3 months. Additional product development continued for several months until the feature set stabilised and we handed over to an internal team.
I ran this project, taking care of all the project management, product direction, UX and directed the UI design with my team. I also regularly paired up with the developers to do QA and design detail implementation.
It was number one in the news category in both app stores for some time after launch, and years later it still has millions of daily active users.
Product team of 14, and a design team of 3.