Sam Judge

The Economist

Better understanding

Client
The Economist
Year
2021
Sector
Editorial
Discipline
Product
The redesigned Economist homepage on a laptop, seen from the side

How do you help a global readership get abreast of what’s happening in the world today? Editors at the Economist felt hindered by their homepage experiences across web and apps. They needed a better way to give prominence to big stories whilst balancing the need to keep people updated with the latest developments.

Our approach married extensive audience research and cross-functional collaboration between product and editorial teams to create a vision for the future of reader experience that balanced editorial control with reader preferences.

The new homepage introduced several new features including: The “Discover Rail”, a thin strip above the top stories designed to promote other formats such as podcasts; and “The World in Brief”, short snippets, allowing editors to respond more quickly to breaking events.

The new homepage was launched in June 2021. It contributed to a 32% increase in website traffic within a year since launch. The design remains unchanged for over three years.

The previous Economist homepage, with a crowded layout

The previous homepage suffered from a chaotic layout, with unclear hierachy. Readers often misunderstood which image related to which text.

This co-design excercise asked readers to create their ideal app. It helped us understand user preferences and shaped early ideas around personalisation.

Paper prototypes from a co-design exercise where readers made their ideal app
Vision for a new app homepage: five annotated phone screens
Our research led to a vision that spanned homepages for web and mobile apps. We presented ideas that would push the boudaries of The Economist’s visual language.
Full-length view of the redesigned Economist homepage
The Economist app homepage across four phone screens
Close-up of The World in Brief column beside the top stories

A closer look at ‘The World in Brief’ a new addition to the homepage designed to enable editors to respond to breaking stories more quickly.

Homepage takeover layout for a major story, on desktop and mobile
Homepage with “Takeover” layout. Reserved for large stories, this module is capable of containing several related articles. It pushes down the regular daily content for the duration of the takeover.

Sam is adept at working through those fuzzy early stages of a project - bringing clarity through his collaborative approach and bringing the users voice into the design process.

Adam Morris, Head of Product Design and UX at The Economist

Credits

Design

  • Sydnee Watlow · Product manager
  • Sam Judge · Lead Designer
  • Mark Mitchell · Lead Designer
  • Sophie Majecki · Designer
  • Beatrice Tamagnini · Designer

Engineering

  • Kristy Nolan · Engineering Manager
  • Ben Paddock · Senior Engineer
  • Matthew Couchman · Senior Engineer
  • Dana Ciocan · Senior Engineer

Leadership

  • Adam Morris · Head of Design
  • Holly Cook · Head of Product
  • Deep Bagchee · CPO