I worked as an UX/UI designer at CNN Money.
CNNMoney is a financial news and information website, operated by the CNN, office locates in New York City.
The works present here are the design for CNNMoney website and their mobile product Money Stream
More detail coming soon
The Problem
Current CNN Money website is too dated. We want to build a more “news like” website with high condensity of information with clean modern design. Design guild will be closer to CNN main site style. We wish to use the design to attract different age group and fully use the variety CNN resources. For CNN MoneyStream, our job is to refine the app, adding exciting new features and fix the old ones.
My Role
I am an UX/UI (Product) designer in the CNN designer team. Working very closely with creative director, art director, project manager, product designers and developers. My main job is to redesign the CNN Money website and keep develop CNNMoney’s mobile product Moneystream (such as adding new features and refine the exited ones). The designer team is a cross functional team., beside working as a product designer, sometime I will help other designers to do editorial and marketing design work.
What I learn
The team works in a Agile environment. We run design spring everything week, do user testing often. Designer has to carry the project from front to end. Everyday we have standups to report information and questions. Every week we come up with new ideas to approach. In the process communication is the key to success. Everyday I am learning new things and new tools keep myself up to date, and always open to new ideas.
THE PROCESS
Examples
For the website, we start from scratch and give it a new look and new functions. New design gives user a clean and fresh page to explore the latest news easier. New function markets banner and side bars to give user live time information. We also designed new video section and video page to show case CNN's variety resource. The new responsive design let the page load faster across different devices.
MoneyStream is a live time financial news app. It lets you follow specific topic you are interested in. Our mission is to let the user access to the news faster, easier and more personal. We developed "Streams" system to organize your news feeds. "Watercooler" feather to feature your favorite news, tab through the news report short and faster. "Markets" page designed to analyzed the complex data to simple graphics. And "Alerts" feature let you keep up the with the market you care for.
Learning points
beside building wireframes and exciting user interface. It is always nice to have small animations to deliver your design idea. Animation also save time for developers to make the idea happen.
Pen and paper are the best tools. Print your idea out and get physical. If user testing is important stage before the delivery, then review your sketches on paper is the "user testing" to yourself in the early stage.
CNN Money design team is a very dynamic and collaborative team. Working at CNN gives me a lot of opportunities to work on different projects and different design fields. Beside work as a UX/UI designer, I also had chance to put my hands on other projects crossing different media and platform (like videos, animations, editorial and marketing designs).
Here is a sneak peak of what we do at CNN Money.
Thank you