The design of Charles Schwab's News & Insights pages was outdated and didn't match the style or design’ style or design system. The pages were hard to use, especially on mobile devices, and didn't meet accessibility standards. Users also found knowing what they could click on and how to move between different topics was confusing.

Following the acquisition of TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab faced the challenge of integrating a substantial amount of content, training materials, and a large user base. To effectively manage this transition, Schwab recognized the need to develop scalable, easily editable, and fully responsive templates.

The task was to devise a custom editorial theme that seamlessly merged the two prevailing design systems at Schwab, catering to both logged-in and logged-out user interfaces.

This integration was crucial due to the diverse range of content accessibility.

I focused on crafting immaculately clean template designs for MVP (Story, Hub, Category, Author) and associated components to accomplish this. These designs were meant to be versatile, being applicable across various templates.

A key consideration was ensuring that the components were user-friendly for editors, adaptable, and visually harmonious, considering that all pages would be constructed by individuals without a design background.

Resolving Tagging and Navigation Issues. The objective was to tackle the challenges related to tagging and navigation within the system. Collaborating with the Information Architecture (IA) team was crucial to streamline the content tagging process. This involved reducing the complexity and levels of content tags to enhance overall usability and simplify user navigation.

• I co-facilitated a remote design thinking workshop with 40 employees to kick off project goals, determine favorite visual styles, and review the best-in-class news experiences.

• I worked with the content team and Brand Journalism to reorganize our topic types. I led weekly meetings with brand journalism, dev, and IA) and bi-weekly meetings with marketing, design system, and leadership.

• I created four responsive page template types and over 60 components

• I built prototypes for our page templates for a round of testing with a 3rd party tester.

• I modified templates based on testing feedback.

Creation of Detailed Design Elements: I created all variable components and provided pixel-perfect redlines, ensuring a smooth handoff to the dev team.

Collaboration with Developers and QA: Post-handoff, I maintained close collaboration with the dev team during the implementation phase. I also worked alongside Quality Assurance (QA) to verify that each component was functional and visually accurate.

Onboarding New Designers: As the project transitioned beyond the MVP stage, I was responsible for onboarding two new designers to maintain Project Story. This was a pivotal move to bolster the team for future developments and expansions of the project, ensuring ongoing support and innovation.