Latest work: design leadership
As Domain Lead UX for the Research Domain at Springer Nature, I was responsible for the UX of the two main academic research websites that hosted all of the science that libraries subscribe to. Besides helping to craft and evangelize the vision of how to move forward into the future as a unified website, I also led or designed the first steps towards this unification and new necessary features that helped to reach our main OKR target of 10% more usage year over year.
Hands-on as needed: super-fast refresh of Springer.com
Springer.com before
Even though we were working on the vision to fold all smaller imprint sites into one destination, the Springer.com site desperately needed help and could not wait until the end of that multi-year project as some resources would be switched off.
Problems
- No money, no time, no people. It was not on an OKR path. Still needed to be done or the site would go offline, so I took it on.
- Site content was very spotty after one of the content repositories had been taken offline. It needed a lot of patching.
- The visual design was completely outdated. It wasn't even responsive.
Springer.com after: responsive, clean, modern
Resources
- I had a wonderful front-end designer-developer.
- Our internal Design System was almost module-complete.
- A back-end was being developed that would allow the most modern front-end practices.
Process
- I quickly wireframed the pages with the existing content, making decisions what would be migrated and what would go where.
- The front-end developer and I made very quick decisions about which existing modules from the design system we would use for various content types. No high-fidelity designs were ever made, saving a ton of time.
- If there was no good module, I would sketch what we needed and the front-end developer would create it, test it, and add it to the design system.
Results
We got it fixed before the deadline, the website can now be read on mobile, and we added some very necessary modules to the Design System, all in record time.
Mentoring junior designers: icon design
A product-line up on the Springer.com subjects page using the icon for a book and the new icon for two series
Problem
- We didn't have a specific icon for a Book Series, and simply used the Book icon, which is the book's cover. This often misled users as a Book Series comprises multiple books, sometimes over 100.
Resources
- I was very fortunate I had just gotten a new UX associate to line-manage who needed a first good project.
Process
- With my guidance, the UX associate designer explored multiple competitors, made several suggestions, worked with a developer to find out what could be made, and finally settled on a representation that was received the best.
Results
- We have a new representation that visually shows in any product line-up what is a book and what is a book series.
- Our new associate learned a lot about what database-driven website and modern front-end technologies can and can't do easily, and how to build images from blending generic components with custom product covers.
Leading design: refreshing Journals in the main repository
The Applied Sciences journal before redesign: important information, like the publishing model, impact factor, and latest articles, are hidden down the page. The page was bland and did not set Springer Nature apart from other publishers.
Problem
- Our main science site, link.springer.com, had an enormous amount of design debt. It had been cobbled together and expanded over 15 years. It didn't even have a consistent menu bar site-wide. The journal and article pages were all mishmashes of features and imprint branding.
- We had a company-wide vision that to serve our users better, we should move all our science to one place and make it coherent. Less branding, more science.
- We needed momentum to kickstart the effort.
Resources
- Management gave the whole domain 8 weeks to do a significant push. We could pause all current work.
- We could define the project ourselves as long as it illustrated the vision.
The same journal after re-design: the information researchers want, like publishing model, impact factors and how to submit, are front and center. The actual content is higher up the page. The team defined 30 header colors to match the main color of every journal.
Process
- As part of 4-person design leadership team I helped define the two flagship projects:
1) Make the menu consistent across the whole site
2) Redesign one brand of journals and their article pages to a unified new look as a pilot for all journals. This is the project I focussed on. - Our visual team had already developed a redesign concept for a journal based on the vision, which I had consulted on. We then worked on a concept for the article.
- The Product Managers for the journal and the article defined the priority of the actual features and links on the page. Based on that, the UXers in their teams, under my design leadership, would design for these priorities in positioning, visuals, and content, bringing the concept.
I reviewed every design iteration deeply, safeguarding design quality and metrics.
Results
Once the new journal went live on the site, the CEO and CPO were so enthusiastic about the feedback they were getting from highest level stakeholders, they asked us to fast-track moving the whole site and all the science (all journals, books, articles, series) to this new look.
Strategic intervention: keeping recommendations accessible
Problem
Springer Nature always felt they should not get in the way of how the researcher finds and reads articles, so the company would only put the article in the main column without any further guidance, always underplaying onward journeys.
This lost us usage and contradicted our new research that researchers wanted more guidance and explanation of the material they were reading.
- How do we help users go onwards with content they will find valuable, without interrupting them?
Resources
Related content presented in a box underneath the abstract, in the main content column of a Nature.com article.
- The company had entered into a new recommendation technology partnership for both search and finding related content. This system was projected to deliver much more relevant onward content.
- The article product team took this on as a full project in the service of the 10% YOY More Usage OKR. This was a full team with BA, UX, Devs, led by a Product Manager and a Project Manager.
Process
I was hands off for the first iteration the team produced, which was to show a slide-out from the top when the user was either downloading the PDF or had read to the end. The thinking was that in both cases the user was ready to move onwards, and that the slide-in movement would catch their attention. It did have fablous uptake numbers.
However, I had to step in as this solution was not accessible for people using voice-over systems or needed low-movement experiences. Since Springer Nature was under extreme scrutiny about accessibility, we had to fix this. I guided Product Management to embed recommendations directly into the article under the abstract, balancing visibility and reading flow.
Results
The simpler solution performed just as well in leading researchers on onward journeys, and all based on the strength of the recommendations. It turns out animation gimmicks were not necessary to get the attention of the user, so the latest recommendations solidly contribute to reaching the target of 10% year over year increase in usage.
Consulting design: refreshing Books
The Book page before: the cover is barely visible, the page looked devoid of information, the calls to action were often misinterpreted to be headers.
Problem
Refreshing the journals and articles was received so well by stakeholders, investors, and scientists, that the teams were under a mandate to move all of link.springer.com to this new appearance, including Book pages.
This would give us the opportunity to pay off a lot of design debt and make a considered page that followed our priorities.
Resources
- The UI team in the domain, consisting of a Lead and a midweight Designer, who had already been working on all aspects of the refresh.
- The team in the domain who works on the Book page were fully scheduled for this.
Process
The Book page after re-design: the cover and title get space and prominence which makes the page memorable, the CTAs looked clickable. We had 30 header colors available, and the system would choose the right color for the main color of the cover.
- Because I had already done some work interviewing a few book editors and working with book producers, I already knew from them what authors and buyers cared about. I consulted with the UI team early about concepts and priorities on the page, and let them know the first visual concept should be the cover. Currently we were giving that very short thrift.
- As the page evolved, I continued to consult on various small questions designers had about interactions. It was a straightforward lift-and-shift, though.
Results
None of the key usage indicators of the book changed, meaning the refresh kept contributing to the OKR goals and sales as projected, while keeping the momentum towards a unified, modern, accessible scientific site going.
