Untouched for many years, the homepage was a major pain-point for editors and readers. The design, a static and visually composed grid, created challenges for content producers who wanted to highlight more than one big story at a time. Stories lacked context and were generally represented by tiny thumbnails, it was stylistically attached to a previous iteration of the magazine, and mobile responsiveness was poor.

A mandate to migrate the product onto a new front-end platform presented an opportunity to thoughtfully address many known issues, while introducing new features and components that we believed would improve the reader experience and increase repeat visitation.

We kicked off the project by reviewing on-site metrics, gathering existing research, and surveying editorial staff. We then formulated a simple and communicable objective and drafted design principles to share with the team.

To ensure alignment across stakeholders we worked collaboratively to refine our messaging and facilitated workshops with the edit team to identify resonant strategies before drafting concepts.

Conceptually, we created two distinct homepage directions based on hypotheses about content discovery and reader needs. Our research team conducted interviews with a broad sampling of WIRED readers to understand what elements resonated with the audience, what was confusing, and what was ignored or misunderstood. The final direction featured a more organized and predictable page architecture, an emphasis on content density, and new tags that helped to clearly indicate the length of stories.

Once we had refined the direction, we worked closely and iteratively with the creative director to integrate the brand’s unique visual language and ensure that the final design was something that the creative team felt proud of.

Our work resulted in a homepage that felt uniquely WIRED, and subsequently introduced many components and features to the design system that could then be extended to other publications.