Merriam Webster Reviews
Timeline: 1 month
My Role: Research, UX, UI
Team: Myself as the sole designer, plus a product manager
Tools: Figma
The Challenge
This project ask came directly from new upper level management at Britannica/MW, who wanted to increase revenue by creating a new affiliate product review site.
Constraints
This project was meant to be completed ASAP, and we worked with an outside development team, as well as a newly hired PM who had been hired specifically to shepherd this product. These outside forces made it a lot more difficult to advocate for more in-depth UX processes.
Process
Competitive Analysis
I started by looking at the designs and structure of other publication’s affiliate sites like NYT’s Wirecutter and New York Magazine’s The Strategist, taking note of the layout of article pages and the information architecture of the sites.
Defining the User
The base audience for Merriam-Webster consists of mostly older people and families, in addition to students. We decided to chiefly focus on that family based audience, and a user that would be focused on things like Home products, learning products for their children, as well as more standard categories like Tech.
Design System
Having gained experience working with the Britannica.com design system, I wanted to build out a new system in Figma, creating base elements and a component library that would allow for consistency between all screens
Table of Contents
The first step to helping manage the breadth of content on a single page was the Table of Contents, allowing Users to easily navigate to different parts of the page.
Pros and Cons
To help cut down on vertical space, we put additional information in accordions that could expand if the user wanted to read beyond the initial paragraph.
Compare Section
Below the product showcase section, we added a compare slider to summarize the products, which allowed the user to see specifically how each of the most important specs matched up.
Next Steps
Handoff to outside development team.
Drive traffic to the site and use analytics and surveys to iterate on features.
Reflection
Though the project was quick and did not afford me the same time as a designer I would have liked to dedicate to research and development, it was a good experience in forcing me to build out information architecture and site structure on the fly, as well as a great UI exercise under a tight deadline.