Evolutions over revolutions

Project: Product design system iterations

Role: UX/UI design

MIT Technology Review: Drake Martinet (chief technical officer), Eric Mongeon (chief creative officer), Mariya Sitnova (head of product), Emily Luong (art director), Kyle Thomas Hemingway (senior designer), Molly Frey (director of software engineering), Michelle Bellettiere (director of analytics), Alli Chase (senior project manager), Jason Lewicki (senior software engineer), Jack Burns (software engineer)

The product team at MIT Technology Review works in two directions: building and improving the ways we deliver and monetize content, and feature work — helping to shape and enhance content. Both are essential to our subscribers’ reading experience.

Before the dust had completely settled on our 2020 redesign, we’d begun building out additional integrations and addressing a deep backlog of component and feature improvements in both those directions, as well as an overall interface audit. But after a years-long redesign and replatforming, absolutely nobody has the stomach for another redesign. So we’re not calling it that.

Now that a rational design system was in place and our tech stack was rebuilt, we could get to work making it awesome. But whatever you do, don’t call it a redesign.

Among the changes currently in the works: expanded visual storytelling tools, user-facing newsletter preference management, new homepage grids, a simplified navigation and taxonomy, and an improved signup gate. And with every new feature or component revision, we’re looking for opportunities to push the visual interface and our products’ functional value forward.