A Redefined Guardian News

Overview

The Guardian is an independent daily newspaper published in Lagos, Nigeria, by Guardian Newspapers Limited. The Guardian has been described as "Nigeria's most respected newspaper"

The goal of the website is to provide a redefined experience for Guardian Newspaper’s digital media platform and online TV service by applying the latest trends, technologies and the optimal user experience and also increasing their online presence

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My role

Product strategy User research Product design

Platforms

Desktop mWeb

Year

2016

The challenge

Mobile First

Guardian News had launched its first website in 2012, as one of the first traditional news outlets in Nigeria to embrace the internet. By 2015 it was one of the most popular news sites and was growing fast. Underneath the surface, though, it was largely unchanged. It had no content database or metadata, with pages published as hard-coded table layouts with inline styles. As the website came under increased funding pressure, the News website needed a redesign to accommodate newer advertising formats.

Responsive Interface

I worked with product managers and design leads to create hypothesis-driven, interactive prototypes. We tested and iterated them based on research in Guardian’s primary markets in Lagos and Abuja. We developed homepage layouts that could adapt to different combinations of news stories, article pages with new storytelling components, and new image and video galleries.

I led the design team to develop the initial visual design direction, web typography and grids. We designed a mobile-first, full-componentized responsive version of the Guardians News website. I prototyped and designed the responsive interfaces. After the initial launch, I continued working with delivery teams on new products and concepts, doing interaction design, prototyping and product design for live event pages. This was a new format that integrated real-time content from across Guardian News TV, and online coverage into a single experience.

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Process

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Outcome

Reach after the redesign

The redesign launched on time, which was unusual for big web design projects at the time. Although it was widely criticized by competitors, we saw a 50% increase in page views within a few weeks and it was soon widely imitated across the industry. The redesign won the Best Print Website by The Nigerian Internet Registration.NG media award in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

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Next project

New Identity - Fidelity Bank

For work inquiries, collaboration or feedback

Reach out oladimejitolu@gmail.com and we can chat more.