Constraints and Learnings
Due to its proximity to traditional news management, the team I was on at NYT was extremely limited in giving designers agency. Here is how I navigated around constraints:
-
A low-bandwidth PM who was managing four teams - I navigated around this by asking other team members on analogous CMS products about their design process to reduce the number of iterations. Also I juggled two projects so I could work on one while waiting for the PM to answer my questions async.
-
Restricted user interaction - Because our users were busy journalists, it was difficult to get feedback even for an internal tool. I relied on documentation from prior research sprints to get up to date with user problems and prepared for weekly 10 minute calls with product onboarding liasons who served as a proxy.
-
Lack of documentation - To better understand the design workflow, I asked designers what got most stakeholder buyin. Due to the team's low engineering bandwidth I learned feasibility was emphasized, I used this as a north star in proposing my ideas which were eventually sent to production.
Work Overview
At this time my work is under NDA as it falls under internal tools. Over my time at NYT:
-
Shipped "Hold for Order" (work for a specific event that will happen in the future) label integration to the Live Admin CMS (Content Management System).
-
Shipped four workflow improvements to Pilot to ensure bursts (example below) are published in a readable manner utilizing NYT's Ink design system.
-
Prototyped MVP of live video minimization micro-interaction with feasibility input from lead engineer and manager of 16 person working group.
-
Proposed PM - designer organizational communication improvements to give designers more product agency
-
Worked on 4 maker week projects (week long hackathon), won best UI for octopus illustrations for Kids App.
In summary, I learned a lot about how to navigate a resource-constrained environment and for advocating my value as a designer. I look forward to my next adventures in design!
