Thomson Reuters – Replatform & Rebrand


PROBLEM

Before we created the Thomson Reuters Marketing Platform, we had 1200 external sites and almost 4000 live domains under the Thomson Reuters umbrella of brands. There were multiple privacy and security issues as well as a fragmented digital landscape on multiple platforms. The vision was to create a single network of sites that was connected, secure and offered a consistent user experience despite our complex landscape.

TEAM & ROLE

I led the UX/design for our entire marketing platform. My team of 3 took the visual design work started by our external partner and built out a design system with fully flexible modules that can support a variety of use cases. We filled in the gaps on component variation and worked closely with the developers to ensure that modules are fully responsive.

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CREATING A DESIGN SYSTEM

I set up and managed our design system in Abstract which is a version controlled hub for our design files. This application allows multiple collaborators to work on files without conflicting copies so that we have one single source of truth for design files. I created the training and rollout plan for this design system across multiple design teams both internal and external to improve efficiency and keep designers and developers in multiple locations informed about each change being made.

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ACCESSIBILITY

I led the effort to make our marketing platform WCAG AA compliant. We started by assessing all of the components within our design system and identified how to make each of them WCAG AA compliant. It was a challenge to find a balance and meet brand guidelines with our signature Thomson Reuters orange not being an accessible color. By shifting our digital orange to a slightly darker shade and increasing typography sizes, we were able to maintain our brand color and meet minimum contrast ratios.

Design by Huge / Development by Global Creative Services, Thomson Reuters

Design by Huge / Development by Global Creative Services, Thomson Reuters

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All designs were updated to ensure a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 in compliance with AA Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. Because we used Sketch Libraries and Abstract to manage the design system - we only needed to make this change once and that button color change was propagated to all components that utilized the button. 


CHALLENGES

One of the biggest challenges was designing the header component to meet all of the potential use cases across hundreds of websites within the Thomson Reuters brands. Some sites had strict color requirements, some required a language toggle to switch language or country, we needed the color options to be compliant with brand guidelines and all of the solutions needed to be fully responsive.

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RESULTS

As of 2018 we had 468 sites migrated and almost half of the original 1200 websites were on a single platform. The new platform not only created a more consistent and seamless user experience, but when we looked at one of the biggest marketing sites on our platform we saw:

+15% increase in leads

+250% increase in leads from search

+150% increase in organic traffic