CNN

VP, Executive creative director

I led a cross-functional UX / Design team of 25+ members responsible for multiple award-winning projects, including two major elections, groundbreaking collaborations with Facebook, the re-branding and re-design of all domestic and international CNN.com products (bringing in @HUGE as collaborators), and the first CNN iOS app.

Awards included: The Peabody, Gold Award for Website of the Year from Society of Publication Designers, two Edward R. Murrow Awards, and several Gold Webbys.

The first question that had to be asked was: why change anything about the most-visited news site in the world? I led a data-intensive, stakeholder-inclusive, and customer-focused deep-dive into where the audience and revenue pain points were. Many brainstorming sessions and listening tours occurred before presenting any possible alternatives to the status quo.

This is a snapshot of site traffic data from the beginning to the time I was engaged, which illustrates that though we were successful, very little traffic was happening in the most monetizable sections. Key insight: the most underutilized asset was clearly identified as video views. These facts, along with other identified UX deadends, became the guiding principles of a redesigned UX.

I was originally brought on board in this role to lead the UX and design for the 2008 Elections, a huge tentpole event for the network. I led the team in UX planning, team leadership (merged the design and UX teams) interactive maps, data visualizations, pre- and post-election, including the Inauguration.

For the Inauguration, we conducted an original collaboration with Facebook, where we brainstormed on their campus to invent a live online-only event with a dynamic update of users. This was a new idea, and we agreed to deploy members of my design team to work onsite, collaborating with their engineers to create a unique product for them, “The News Feed,” now a core foundation for all of Meta products.

Because we had a very popular and widely used mobile site, I felt it gave us an opportunity to pursue a premiere iPhone app, so I led a small swat team of UX designers to envision and prototype the “dream news app.” We took the concept directly to Apple, and even though our concept contained elements and gestures not available on the OS at the time, we successfully pitched Apple to partner with us.

Working directly with Apple engineers we became the first app to include video and live streams, plus we invented the gesture “swipe left” to advance to the next story (prior to this scrolling was only up and down, with no lateral navigation).

Prior to my tenure, CNN had no social media or audience interactions. I was tasked with leading the adoption and UX/design integration of social media into our platform, including Twitter, Facebook and a redesigned CNN iReport, amplifying and legitimatizing the citizen journalists community of CNN to meet the urgency of the world news cycle.

Previously iReport was “associated” with CNN but presented as “indie.” In listening to our citizen journalist community it became clear their primary motivation for reporting was to tell their story to the world, and viewed iReport as their best opportunity due to it’s CNN connection. We embraced their wishes and increased vetting efforts to integrate more authentic user videos on-air and online.

I personally led the effort to modernize and align the brand elements, selling through the idea to simplify CNN.com to just CNN and creating a square logomark more conducive to social and digital use. Multiple brands were then created in the same sensibility, adding on with touches of whimsy or gravity, depending on subject matter.

Once we’d successfully integrated social media, it was time to expand the dialogue with our audience. We launched multiple subject matter blogs, including Belief, Afghanistan Crossroads, The Marquee Blog, Eatocracy and This Just In (breaking news blog).

We were always looking for new ways to use data to tell stories. Having access to the ongoing state department data showing the casualties of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars led us to create “Home and Away,” an ongoing visualization of soldier’s location of death juxtaposed with their hometowns. The tone needed to remain somber, but felt immediate to add an opportunity to learn more about their humanity, so each soldier was given a tribute page, where family and friends could add to the story and leave a remembrance.

Here’s a launch promo showcasing all the elements of the new redesigned site featured at the world-wide press event and on-air:

Because I am personally driven by the dual philosophies of leading with empathy and the pursuit of continuous improvement, I led various interdepartmental brainstorming sessions, scrums and explorations on new features and products, and encouraged my team to always be looking toward what’s next.

“The CNN Challenge” was created to expand audience engagement and create a digital link to the broadcast through choosing your favorite host and rewarding “news smarts.”

I spearheaded strategy and design for THE GIANTS PROJECT, a collaboration between CNN and Facebook, which expanded the aperture of the brand from news, connecting pop culture, celebrities and causes with their passionate audiences.