Newsela Visual Redesign

The visual redesign of the entire Newsela platform was a major undertaking over two years. By the time I left, approximately 85% of the project had been completed.

Role: Design Director

background context

The project, recognized by the former CMO as the best cross-collaboration effort at Newsela, began with a design workshop in July 2021, which I led with the Product Design and Marketing teams. We aimed to address inconsistent design patterns, accessibility issues, limited brand usage, and unclear element hierarchies. After aligning on our goal of enhancing teacher engagement, we created four distinct experience boards, ranging from safe updates to bold approaches.

We opted for a balanced direction, adding more color and integrating the curved feature from the Newsela logo. We enhanced contrast in interactive elements and collaborated with the UX Research team to gather teacher feedback through an unmoderated study on the new visual design.

We first tweaked the designs on the homepage, article, and video pages based on the study's findings. Along with the new visual design, we also made UX improvements based on feedback from teachers.