NBC & Telemundo
Re-designing a digital local news ecosystem across the country
Product design, product strategy
Overview
NBC needed a redesign of the desktop and mobile web experiences for their local NBC news stations and Telemundo stations, which serve English and Spanish-speaking audiences across 30 markets in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. It was the first major digital redesign since the websites were introduced in 2008, and an opportunity to streamline and modernize the templates and layouts used throughout all the websites.
Along with another designer, I collaborated with the product team at NBC to update the website’s editorial design, optimizing for local content needs, video, and breaking news. We created a streamlined design that fit within the family of NBC local TV plus other NBC Universal digital brands.
Design System & Approach
The project scope included developing initial creative concepts and strategies, formalizing those into a design system based on feedback from the NBC design team, and delivering core templates with guidance on responsive breakpoints and transition behaviors. While designing we had a few goals in mind:
- Strengthen the connection between broadcast and digital through improved visual branding and content presentation.
- Support the different content needs of users and publishing formats (i.e. breaking news, sports, weather, local news, editorial packages/features)
- Create a simple template & module structure while maintaining flexibility and “future-proofing” template design
Launch & Results
Overall, the redesign launched with a CMS system that enabled journalists to publish content easily across platforms, and with modular future-proofed templates that are still in use today from when they were first launched. The design system we collaborated on was successfully implemented in both English and Spanish, and adapted for all the different stations between NBC Local and Telemundo across the country. As a result, the new design provides a modernized foundation across different content types, including breaking news and local investigative news, live streaming, weather, video, and deeper immersive reporting.
Takeaways
I enjoyed collaborating on creating an easy-to-understand reading experience, working towards efficient delivery of different content types, and creating a scalable design system. It was fun to design for a larger scale, considering information hierarchy across different pages, and designing to make sure the layouts were modular to accommodate various content in both English and Spanish. Some takeaways:
- Be better about designing mobile-first; make sure pages and content are responsive earlier on in the process, especially if user behavior is more geared towards mobile use.
- Create smarter internal production systems, i.e. handling symbols/components and patterns across screen sizes.
- Organize and catalogue feedback throughout the project in way that’s easier to look back on, especially if the feedback is coming back at different times than expected.
Team
Studio Rodrigo
PM & Strategy – Ritik Dholakia
UX Research – Mike Klodginski
Design Lead – Khoi Uong
Design – Connie Chu, Nick Emrich, Aldo Juraidini, Ashley Newcomer
NBC
VP of Product Design – Daniel Alvarez
Product Manager – Connie Hernandez
UX Design Manager – Samir Shah