The Philadelphia Inquirer

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Building UX Maturity From the Ground Up

Modernizing design at one of America's oldest newsrooms — establishing a UX process, creating the first design system, mentoring a team of non-UX designers, and finding the balance between user experience and ad revenue.

Hero Image

Client The Philadelphia Inquirer

Duration July 2022 – April 2023

My Role Product Design Lead

Team Cross-functional design team, developers, product, advertising

Tools Figma, Storybook, Tailwind CSS, Jira, Confluence

Key Deliverables UX process, Figma migration, design system, CTA audit, team mentorship

The problem

The Inquirer's digital experience had no structured UX process, no design system, and a design team that came almost entirely from graphic design and marketing backgrounds.

As one of the oldest newspapers in the country transitioned from print to digital, the organization had invested in product design — but hadn't yet built the foundation to support it. Design assets were scattered across tools. Workflows were inconsistent. Handoffs between design and development were inefficient and error-prone. And the advertising-heavy revenue model was actively working against the user experience, with intrusive CTAs and dark patterns disrupting content consumption.

Nobody had ever tried to formalize how design worked here. That was the job.

Problem visualization

0 structured UX processes when I started

6 mo to rebuild file structure and end-to-end UX process

1st design system in the organization's history

Full CTA audit with scoring model for ad impact

My role

I came in as Product Design Lead with a broad mandate: figure out how design should work here, then make it happen. That meant everything — from migrating tools and building systems to mentoring designers who'd never worked in UX before and navigating the tension between user experience and the advertising revenue that kept the lights on.

This wasn't a consulting engagement where I could parachute in and hand off a deliverable. I was embedded in the organization, working alongside the team every day, building trust with stakeholders across product, engineering, marketing, and advertising. The goal was to leave the Inquirer with a design operation that could sustain itself without me.

Process Architect

Developed a structured UX process from scratch — research, discovery, user flows, wireframes, visual design, and delivery documentation. Gave the team a repeatable workflow where none existed.

Design System Creator

Built the Inquirer's first design system using a federated, atomic model — foundations, components, and patterns across web and native mobile. Integrated with Storybook and Tailwind CSS for seamless dev handoff.

Team Mentor

Mentored designers transitioning from graphic design and marketing backgrounds into UX roles. Ran regular 1:1s, provided career guidance, and introduced UX fundamentals through hands-on project work.

UX Advocate

Bridged the gap between product and advertising teams. Led a full CTA audit that gave both sides a shared framework for evaluating the impact of ads on user experience.

The approach

Phase 1 — Assess & Migrate

Understand the landscape and consolidate tools

Assessed the team's existing workflows, pain points, and tool fragmentation. Led the migration of all design assets to Figma, establishing a single source of truth. Rebuilt the org's file structure to support the full design lifecycle — from exploration through delivery.

Phase 2 — Establish Process

Build the UX workflow from scratch

Created a structured end-to-end UX process: research, discovery, user flows, wireframes, visual design, and delivery documentation. Introduced governance rituals — design reviews, critique sessions, and structured handoffs — to bring consistency to how work moved through the team.

Phase 3 — Build the System

Create the first design system

Designed and implemented a scalable design system using a federated, atomic model — foundations, components, and patterns across web and native mobile. Worked closely with developers to integrate Storybook and Tailwind CSS, ensuring the system was useful to engineering from day one.

Phase 4 — Mentor & Advocate

Grow the team and bridge UX with revenue

Ran regular mentorship sessions with designers transitioning into UX. Simultaneously partnered with research and advertising teams to conduct a full CTA audit — creating a scoring model that let both product and advertising evaluate ad impact on user experience with shared language.

Creating the first design system

The Inquirer had never had a design system. Every component was a one-off, every page was an island, and developers were left guessing at spacing, colors, and interaction patterns.

I built the system using a federated, atomic model: foundations (color, typography, spacing, grid), components (buttons, inputs, cards, navigation), and composed patterns (article layouts, subscription flows, mobile navigation). Each layer built on the last, and every piece was integrated with Storybook and Tailwind CSS so developers could consume the system directly.

The design system wasn't just about consistency — it was about giving a team with limited UX experience a structured toolkit they could use confidently. Instead of making design decisions from scratch every time, they could build with proven patterns and focus their energy on the problems that actually needed creative thinking.

Design system showcase

Bridging UX and ad revenue

The Inquirer's revenue model depended on advertising. The user experience was paying the price. And nobody had a framework for talking about it.

The product experience was riddled with interruptions — pop-ups, interstitials, inline CTAs, dark patterns that tricked users into clicks. The advertising team was optimizing for engagement metrics. The product team was frustrated by the impact on usability. And the two sides had no shared language for evaluating the tradeoffs.

I partnered with the research and advertising teams to conduct a full audit of every CTA and interruption across the product. Then I created a scoring mechanism — a formal model that measured the severity of each ad type based on its disruption to the user experience. I prototyped experiences to illustrate the impact visually, making it tangible for stakeholders who'd only ever seen the numbers.

The result wasn't about eliminating ads — it was about giving both teams a shared framework for making better decisions together. For the first time, the advertising team could see the UX cost of their choices, and the product team could advocate with data instead of gut feelings.

"The goal wasn't to kill the ads — it was to give both teams a shared language for making better tradeoffs."

Before

No framework for evaluating ad impact on UX
Product and advertising teams misaligned
Intrusive CTAs and dark patterns throughout
Decisions based on gut feelings, not data
UX concerns dismissed as anti-revenue

After

Formal scoring model for CTA disruption severity
Shared framework between product and advertising
Visual prototypes illustrating ad impact
Data-backed UX advocacy
Collaborative decision-making on ad placement

Growing a UX team from within

The Inquirer's designers were talented — but they came from graphic design and marketing, not UX. My job was to help them make the leap.

I ran regular 1:1s focused on career development, introduced UX fundamentals through real project work rather than abstract theory, and created space for the team to practice research-backed, user-centered design in a supportive environment. The mentorship wasn't about turning graphic designers into UX designers overnight. It was about building confidence, expanding their toolkit, and showing them that the skills they already had — visual thinking, brand sensitivity, communication design — were assets in UX, not liabilities.

By the time I left, the team was working within a structured UX process they understood and believed in. They had a design system to build with, a governance model to maintain quality, and the confidence to advocate for user experience in a business that had historically prioritized reach and revenue over usability.

Outcomes

Process impact

Built a structured end-to-end UX process where none existed
Migrated all design assets to Figma with a rebuilt file structure
Introduced governance rituals — reviews, critiques, structured handoffs

System impact

Created the organization's first design system (federated, atomic model)
Integrated with Storybook and Tailwind CSS for seamless dev handoff
Standardized UI components across web and native mobile

Team impact

Mentored designers transitioning from graphic design into UX
Established regular 1:1s and career development framework
Left the team with processes and confidence to sustain UX independently

Business impact

Conducted a full CTA audit with a formal disruption scoring model
Bridged the gap between product and advertising teams
Created a shared framework for balancing UX quality with revenue needs

What I learned

The Inquirer taught me what it means to build UX maturity from zero. Not at a tech company where design already has a seat at the table — at a 200-year-old newsroom where "design" had always meant layout and typography, not user research and information architecture. Every win had to be earned through demonstration, not declaration. The team didn't need a UX evangelist telling them what was wrong. They needed a partner who could show them what was possible and help them get there.

The CTA audit was the work I'm most proud of from this engagement. It would have been easy to position it as "UX vs. advertising" — and it would have failed immediately. Instead, by building a shared scoring framework and prototyping the impact visually, we turned a contentious relationship into a collaborative one. That lesson — that advocacy works better with shared tools than shared opinions — has shaped how I approach stakeholder alignment ever since.

And the mentorship work reinforced something I keep coming back to: the best way to elevate a team isn't to do the work for them. It's to build the systems, processes, and confidence that let them do it themselves. When I left, the Inquirer's design team was working differently — not because I told them to, but because they'd experienced firsthand why it was better.

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