The Economist – UX Design & Strategy – Design Templates & Ways of Working (fully remote project)

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UX DESIGN LEAD
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The Economist Group is the leading source of analysis on international business and world affairs. They deliver information through a range of formats, from newspapers and magazines to conferences and electronic services. What ties the group together is the objectivity of their opinion, the originality of their insight and their advocacy of economic and political freedom around the world.

In February 2020, I joined the project team working with The Economist with the responsibility of leading the delivery of the a set of design templates and visual libraries as well as a revised strategy for their team ways of working. The challenge was to create a visual library that would suit a multitude of partners of their online publications whilst keeping visual consistency with their on branding guidelines. Their internal digital team was also in need of updating their tooling, systems and the way they interact with each other.

 

The Problem

The Economist Intelligence Unit Content Solutions team finds themselves spending too much time designing simple websites and wants to focus their time on the more interesting, complex, bespoke and profitable designs.

 

The Solution

Our proposal was to create a design component library to enable them quick and easy collaboration as a design team, using up to date tooling and ways of working. Our goal was to help, teach and empower them to create, expand and maintain this component library.

 

 

The Process

We took them on a one month journey of new ways of working, collaborative sessions and lots of learning. Our team converted their old designs into reusable components and coached them on how to create new items and maintain the library. We also recommended new ways of working to make the solution scalable and sustainable.

 

 

 

The Result

  • 40+ components (and variations) created 
  • How To Guidelines
  • Ways of Working Recommendations

 

Testimonials

 

“The deliverables are awesome and helped us
have important conversations as a team.”
Tristan Summerscale, Head of Digital Product & Delivery at The Economist

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“You did a very good job – we are excited
to start to use the component library!”
Elsa Lima, Senior Art Director at The Economist Group