Architect was one of my first projects when I joined what was then called de//space, the innovation team at Gatehouse Media.

My job was to redesign and rebuild the longform storytelling platform, iterating on the first version that was a finalist in APME's innovator of the year award in 2018. I started by interviewing several reporters and editors who had been power users of the first version, documenting pain-points, user's wishlists and how each newsroom's workflows affected the projects they'd create.

One advantage to the rebuild was moving the platform to Wordpress' then-newly released Gutenberg editor. By updating the creator-side interface to the new page and post builder, a mojority of the users' workflow issues were resolved (i.e., wanting the page editor to better reflect the front end and having prebuilt components for a variety of content).

Below is a user journey diagram of the "editorials" persona, users who build projects in the platform but are not digital producers or designers.

This project set the tone for much of my work at Gannett, where I not only have to design and develop products for a variety of teams and users, but I have to consider how those users create their own sites and content using those platforms.

Gatehouse and, post-merger, Gannett newsrooms produced dozens of stories with the rebuilt platform before it was sunset in 2021.

Here are some of my favorite projects our users created:

• Unaccountable, The Oklahoman
• Slavery in Rhode Island, Providence Journal
• Fort Bragg Murder Case Intrigues 50 Years Later ,The Fayetteville Observer
• A World Rocked, Austin American-Statesman
• Hostage to Heat, National Investigative Team

This mobile-focued web application was one of three Google News Initiative Challenge-funded projects I worked on over the past two years. Pass the Mic connects journalists to a crowdsourced network of sources from underrepresented communities.

I led design and user research efforts on this project, one of the first for my team to have outsourced development, so I took advantage of that privelege and pushed my design skills. Working closely with the project's founder and manager, I took the initial ideas and user flows and translted them to wireframes and eventual hi-fi prototypes.

A unique challenge for this product was creating workflows for the three main users: reporters, editors and sources. While reporters and editors would have similar levels of access, subtle differenes in their job requirements led us to expand the available functionality for editors.

For example, editors needed to be able to create teams and onboard their staff, whereas reporters could focus more individually on finding sources.

Moreover, all users (though sources especially) required a strong sense of security and safety when sharing their information with and on the platform. Tech stack and usability discussions for data protection and privacy were part of our talks from the very beginning.

Below is one of our first passes at the user and tech flows.

Bytecast was my team's first GNI Challenge-funded project, and work on the product started at an inconvenient time, to say the least.

Funding was awarded in late-fall 2019, just before the merger between Gatehouse and Gannett was finalized, and our early prototyping started when we still weren't sure what our new team(s) would look like. We wrapped that up right around the beginning of March 2020, so, to say our perspective and priorities had some readjustment is an understatement.

Here are some of my early sketches while doing the first prototype.

As the merger dust settled and we adjusted to the pandemic lifestyle, we found ourselves partnered with our colleagues on the emerging tech team — designers and developers who typically work on USA TODAY's AR projects, but who were up to the challenge of building an app.

My role shifted from hands-on UX/UI design to a bridge role between the designer, developers and other project stakeholders. I spent the summer of 2020 helping define the key functionality, primary user needs and user testing as we rebuilt the prototype with our new colleagues.

I worked directly on revising part of the proposed workflow to support quick publishing, a need we identified from our user testing where participants felt there were too many taps between recording and uploading content.

Here's that flow.