Managing a redesign
Lead UX Designer @ Reuters from 2020 - 2021
Context
In late 2019, Reuters was working with outside agencies to reimagine Reuters.com and develop a monetization strategy. Their goal was to create a subscription service - one that would fuel growth, drive innovation, and have a distinct, aspirational look that people would want to be part of.
At the time Reuters’ product team had only one in-house designer, focused solely on their Reuters connect product. To support this new vision for Reuters.com, they planned to expand their internal design team. As their engagement with the agencies was wrapping up, they reached out to the Thomson Reuters Legal UX team to help oversee and support the design handoff. That’s where I came in.
This is a really high-level overview, so much was accomplished in the 9 months that I was engaged with Reuters during the busiest news cycle between the global pandemic, the 2020 election and the insurrection on January 6th.
Collaborative design process
I was initially brought in as a temporary resource to act as a subject matter expert for the Thomson Reuters brand and product design and provide feedback and guidance to the agency along with a few other colleagues who were more product and IA focused. We partnered with the agency through their design process that included a week of “immersion” into the world of Reuters, a week of “define” where we aligned to what we were solving for, that then set us up for 3 weeks of design sprints.
During those 3 sprints the agency was on point to deliver:
The start of a visual identity: typography, color palette, grid and UI library
Wireframes for 3 page templates: homepage, article and topic page
A navigation system full fleshed out
High fidelity designs for homepage and article page
Ways of working
One key area I stepped into during this effort was project management. Before the agency kicked off its design process, I put together a “ways of working” initiative to streamline collaboration:
Established Sketch and Abstract project guidelines to optimize teamwork
Set up channels, planner boards, file repositories, and Miro boards for seamless coordination
Trained the product team on UX story mapping and co-creation processes
Partnered with the agency to develop a new design language for Reuters
Created a glossary of editorial terms and online advertising concepts to align teams
Subscription model
While the agency was entering their design sprints, me and my colleagues partnered on mapping out the details for the new beta registration model which was phase 1 of the larger paid subscription monetization strategy.
We created a story map of the beta registration experience
Which then helped us create a roll out plan for ramping up the model
Design sprints
During the 3 design sprints we worked closely as the agency created their designs and we were available for any on-call support needed. At the end of each sprint the agency would then send over their design artifacts and we would turn around consolidated feedback in about 48 hours for them to take into their next spring.
Below is a sample delivery of a topic page template:
Desktop
Mobile
One of the biggest challenges with the agency engagement was their desire to push the brand in new directions without fully considering that reuters.com is just one part of a larger enterprise ecosystem — one that wasn’t in scope to change. As part of our regular feedback cadence, I conducted two in-depth studies analyzing the impact of their proposed changes to typography and color. Ultimately, we pushed back on altering key foundational brand elements, instead challenging them to find innovative ways to work within our existing brand.
Design implementation
Shortly after the agency delivered final files I was brought on to the Reuters’ product team full time. My old teammates continued on designing the beta registration experience while I dove into the implementation of the page template strategy and the development of the design language.
Translating design into code
My immediate next step was prepping the agency’s files for development. The biggest task was annotating all functionality and component variations - detailing how dynamic content should map into components and defining input labels for the content management system. Given the scale and fast-paced nature of a news site, everything needed to be highly templated. This ensured that journalists and editors could write articles or curate landing pages consistently and accurately.
Sample page template annotations
Sample component annotations
Advertising operations
Ad placement templates
Since the agency’s ad placements were only placeholders, I took the lead in finalizing their implementation. I collaborated closely with our digital marketing team to optimize placement strategy and ensure seamless integration across multiple ad platforms. To support alignment and scalability, I created a detailed reference document mapping ad locations across all page templates, including which platforms populated each slot and how they would function within the broader layout.
Design solutions for monetization tiers
Reuters frequently offers sponsorship opportunities for section pages — ranging from major events like Davos or the Tokyo Olympics to curated article collections aligned with a sponsor’s brand. To support this model, I developed a tiered system of page layouts tailored to different levels of ad spend. This system provided design flexibility while maintaining editorial integrity and streamlined production, allowing us to scale sponsorship packages efficiently based on investment level.
BRONZE
Bronze-tier sponsorships used our standard section landing page template, customized with a black hero treatment and a “Sponsored by” callout to reflect the partnership.
SILVER
Silver-tier sponsorships featured a larger hero area with the option to include imagery, sponsor messaging, event dates, or taglines. These pages allowed for greater customization through a broader set of existing components, including video galleries, Jumbotron banners, event schedules, and latest news module — offering more layout flexibility to align with campaign goals.
GOLD
Gold-tier sponsorships built on the flexibility of Silver, with the added benefit of custom component development and dedicated UX consultation. This tier enabled sponsors to collaborate closely with out design team to craft bespoke experiences tailored to their brand and campaign objectives, going beyond our existing component library to create fully customized, high-impact pages.
Refining and optimizing the design
During the development and launch of the new site, we uncovered several opportunities to refine and optimize the agency’s design. Before I moved on, I delivered a new design vision addressing key issues — while I didn’t get to see them through to launch, I can still see their influence on the site today.
Floating header issues
The original header was made up of different floating elements, that on scroll just the main navigation links would stick to the top of the browser.
This turned out to be a bit of a challenge — not just to code, but to code accessibly — since the elements had to be separated to achieve the scroll effect. On top of that, it created an awkward reading experience, often cutting off headlines and copy, which was especially noticeable in mobile. We also realized we were compromising one of our top user tasks: keeping search easily accessible within a sticky navigation.
I partnered with the accessibility and development teams to propose a more traditional, straight-bar header navigation component, where the entire element would remain sticky on scroll. Above is the original wireframe of that concept, and as you can see in 2025, the core design and intent of this update are still in place today.
Text flow issues
The agency was very adamant that they wanted to disrupt the way readers consumed their news. One way they were passionate about this was formatting content into these graphic cards for differing article re-circulation components.
These cards became a pain point for both design and editorial. With fixed heights, journalists had to tailor headlines and summaries to fit specific character counts across multiple card types — a heavy lift given the volume of daily articles on reuters.com. Auto-populating content was the fallback, but that often meant awkwardly truncated text, which hurt both accessibility and readability.
I developed a set of article re-circulation wireframes focused on improving text flow — boosting readability, clarity, and the overall reading experience - while also allowing for system-driven content to lighten the load on editors and journalists. In my presentation to the product team, I shared competitive research showing that, in trying to stand out, we were veering too far from editorial and typographic best practices.
A glance at the site today reveals the shift away from fixed-height cards, marking a significant improvement in both design and user experience.
Addressing accessibility oversights
A key gap in our agency engagement was their limited accessibility expertise. They delivered ambitious landing page concepts featuring multiple automated components — including a custom “Media maximizer” with an autoplaying carousel, a stock ticker, and a sticky mini video player. I stepped in as the accessibility lead, flagging issues early and guiding the team to remove autoplay, implement proper focus management, and add start/stop/pause control — ensuring alignment with WCAG while maintaining the intended experiences.
Longer-term, I proposed removing the Media maximizer entirely, citing UX best practices that discourage the use of carousels due to low user engagement. I also recommended replacing the automated stock ticker with a static display highlighting key market data, paired with a clear call to action linking to the full Markets page. As a potential future enhancement, I suggested allowing users to personalize which stocks appear in this section.
Scaling the design
Toward the end of the project, I started laying the groundwork to scale the new UI kit into a design system that could work across all of Reuters. The organization is built around three main pillars: markets data through Refinitiv (now part of London Stock Exchange), their agency business via the Connect platform, and their professional products — including events, the native app, Reuters Plus, and reuters.com. Each of these areas had been using different design languages, often developed by separate internal and external teams, which led to a pretty fragmented experience. To help bring things into alignment, I began setting up a shared component library in Sketch and Abstract using atomic design principles. The goal was to make the system accessible across teams with varying levels of technical resources — so even if they couldn’t use the full reuters.com component set, they could still align on foundational styles and branding.