case study: product design
thomson reuters
communities forum
I had end-to-end ownership of Communities, a project built in partnership with developers from Social Edge on the Varient platform. Navigating the platform's technical limitations, I led design delivery and cross-team alignment. I managed weekly stand-ups, created annotated page handoffs, and applied updated design tokens and components to ensure the design system was seamlessly integrated.
To ensure we were driving real value, we ran surveys and exploratory research to understand user engagement. We learned that most users were "seekers"—they came to find practical answers to specific problems and cared deeply about career development. While they highly trusted TR's content, they were concerned that quality might drop as site traffic increased.
research + insights
Based on these insights, we restructured the experience into three distinct areas. Open Communities made content publicly browsable and searchable; Closed Communities protected sensitive information for approved members; and Your Communities provided a personalized space for users to find relevant answers faster. This structure improved search visibility, protected sensitive data, and protected moderators from spam accounts.
The redesign successfully helped users help each other while improving the overall customer journey. The business results were significant:
delivering for users
404%
increase in membership
increase in content views
108%
growth in call deflection, significantly reducing the strain on customer support teams.