Featuring:
Alex Hsiao, VP of Product Design (pictured)
Amanda Rottier, SVP and Head of Product

Situation: the shift to digital

In an era driven by an insatiable demand for real-time news and multimedia content, the landscape of media consumption has undergone a profound shift towards digital experiences. Recognizing this seismic change, CNN, a stalwart in broadcasting and pioneer of the 24-hour news cycle, understood the imperative to strategically reassess its digital presence to maintain its dominance in the digital realm.

Since its inaugural broadcast on June 1st, 1980, CNN has been at the forefront of covering wars, natural disasters, politics, and pop culture, initially in America and later worldwide. CNN revitalized news, delivering credible, timely, and relevant information into living rooms 24/7, and bringing breaking news with real-time human experiences to global audiences.

From the live coverage of events such as the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy to groundbreaking interviews like President Clinton's from the Oval Office, CNN has been a constant presence at every significant global event over the past forty years. In 1995, CNN launched its first website, initially called CNN Interactive. Following Turner Broadcasting System's acquisition by Time Warner in 1996, and subsequently becoming WarnerMedia, CNN is now part of Warner Bros. Discovery. 

On CNN Digital platforms, ranking consistently as the #1 digital news outlet in unique users, mobile users, younger users, and in politics. CNN had a monthly average of 159 million unique visitors worldwide in 2023 across mobile and desktop.

As a household name and trusted global news source, CNN's legacy demanded staying relevant and embracing authenticity, digital storytelling, and reinvention while navigating its position within a global media portfolio. To empower CNN’s forward evolution, the team seized an opportunity to reimagine its future in reinforcing its position as the most trusted news source on television and digital apps. 

At the heart of this transformation was a commitment to delivering breaking news, serving timely and relevant information to audiences—the cornerstone of CNN's identity—while harnessing the potential of technology to create user-centered digital experiences across diverse platforms, brands, and media properties for consumers worldwide. One of the key questions facing CNN today is how to evolve with rapidly evolving news consumption behavior in the age of digital and technological disruption.

Solution: unifying culture with strategy

Alex Hsiao, VP of Product Design, spearheads global product design and user experience initiatives across CNN's owned and third-party platforms. Together with Amanda Rottier, SVP and Head of Product, embarked on a transformative initiative called Project Elevate, a transformative endeavor aimed at enhancing CNN's digital user experience and addressing opportunities stemming from the mass media and entertainment conglomerate formation of Warner Bros. Discovery. This was formed from WarnerMedia’s spin-off by AT&T and merged from Discovery, Inc. Alex initiated the project explaining, “I felt the need for a spark to guide us forward, and it was clear that we needed a game-changer so I initiated Project Elevate. It seemed like the perfect name for the moment we were in. It was about attracting new users and adopting a modern design approach to create a premium user experience. I wanted to paint a vivid picture of what our future could look like, to inspire and propel us forward in the face of uncertainty and rapid change.”  

Navigating involvement in product development presented unique challenges. Alex noted, "In media companies, there are four distinct types of designers: visual designers & editors in the newsroom, product designers focusing on user experience, and marketing designers handling branding and campaigns, and broadcast designers in the studios. Furthermore, we had to work closely with a broad range of internal stakeholders, partners and external users. We conducted qualitative and quantitative research to inform and advise on the direction.” To capability for creating cohesive end-to-end experiences meant Alex and his team had to not only bring together product design and research, but newsroom and stakeholders across the board. 

Project Elevate sought to attract new users with a design approach that elevated a more premium experience. With Alex's advocacy and Amanda's support, access to the executive team was secured, resulting in a significant investment in a design system by the CFO. This bolstered design capabilities and talent, instilling trust and empowerment within the product, design, and engineering teams, and fostering a belief that they could redefine the company's trajectory with an unmatched digital experience.

Project Elevate wasn't just about sophisticated interfaces,” Alex emphasized. “It was about crafting an elevated, premium user experience that would attract new audiences. It was about demonstrating the tangible impact of strategic design, threading the stories & data we heard from users and partners into a compelling narrative of possibility,”.

To create a cohesive end-to-end experience, Alex introduced Connected Design Reviews (CDRs). CDRs served as a vital meeting point to drive centralized design decisions and understanding across senior product design leadership; ensuring everyone understood and aligned on how to orchestrate the CNN experience.

To ensure a unified customer experience, Alex implemented Connected Design Reviews (CDRs). These meetings are crucial for centralizing design decisions and fostering a shared understanding among senior product design leaders, aligning them on how to seamlessly integrate the CNN experience. CDRs are valuable as well for designers, as they provide success metrics, and research data to help inform the design solution focused on being outcome over output driven. 

“If we want to innovate together, if we are serious about CNN’s digital future,” Amanda explained. “We have to be able to speak together; we have to be able to have a common language and a vision that we can all aspire to.”  This was an essential part of the design journey for Alex - to unify cross-company initiatives and shift the culture towards user-centered design.

Recognizing the need for cohesive communication and shared learnings across the organization, Alex and Jessica Cherry, Head of Design Operations, which was a newly established capability, initiated the Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) Design Town Hall, drawing participation from various design teams across the global WBD organization. Alex added, “Since 6 months ago when it started, it has snowballed. “I hear from people all the time ‘Hey, we want to be a part of this!’” A total of about 200 employees representing not only the CNN Product Design team but also design teams representing businesses across News, Sports, Streaming and Entertainment are attending now. Through a global knowledge sharing hub, it enabled teams to accelerate the way they learned and approach work via design cross-pollination and ideation.

To anticipate and meet the evolving needs and expectations of CNN's diverse audience base, Alex's strategy went beyond the foundational capabilities of rapid content publication of a CMS and addressed iterative UX enhancements. “There was a definitive need for us to focus on the key foundational capabilities to enable us to propel forward, as well as influencing iterative enhancements and improvements to the user experience.” Alex added, “There's a technical foundation we need to continue to build on, which is our CMS. And then the Project Elevate, which ultimately was sort of the visionary project concept, future roadmap and really our north star.”

Amanda underscored the importance of tangible improvements in user experience and business metrics.“Where we like to see real hard improvements is on the sort of experiences like in the day today. Whether that's improving video views over a period of time based on a new feature, or like mobile app usage over a period of time, some of those smaller metrics that you may not  see are in the larger audience trends.”

Ultimately, success is measured not only by improved metrics but also by delivering positive, usable experiences to CNN's audience while effectively monetizing engagement. Amanda emphasized, “They may not like the news, so we can't really control that. But we can make sure that people have a positive experience and a usable experience when they come so that's always the highest bar… I'm incredibly data business driven. I'm also looking at how good we are at delivering on our business results, whether that's ads, or different revenue models, subscriptions, affiliate revenue, whatever. Are we effectively monetizing our audience, we monetizing them in the best way possible?”

Alex highlighted the importance of balancing design with business goals: “I needed to get my design team to work towards the business goal. It's how we steer our designers to consider their ROI. The notional concept of 'time' is a key consideration that our designers focused on. The time our designers are spending on crafting an experience, and the return on the investment of their time. Keeping the top line metric in mind as they craft the user experience is an integral part of this design-driven culture change. We considered the user value exchange as part of the monetization of engagement strategy. The 'time' exchange is focal to our user-centered approach. So how do we put forth our distinctive journalism, in a compelling storytelling format, and an intuitive UX so that our consumers choose to come back to us time and time again. The exchange for our consumer’s time is always at the center of our approach.”

Reflection: the power of strategic alignment

Alex reflects on the profound impact that Project Elevate had on the design team as well as the entire organization stating, “Today Project Elevate is at the heart of our design ethos, transcending individual teams and shaping our company's trajectory. It's more than just a project; it's a company-wide cultural shift, a testament to observation, imagination, and the relentless pursuit of excellence." As a result of this project, Alex shared that CNN Digital has seen a double digit percentage increase on time spent and page views, and 2x increase in video starts.

He emphasizes how Project Elevate served as a masterclass in fostering collaboration and strategic design leadership across CNN and the broader WBD, extending beyond design, product, and tech teams to engage the entire enterprise. Amidst a period of change, it was about identifying opportunities and possibilities for growth. Despite the hurdles, he saw the transition towards a centralized model as a necessary step towards embracing digital transformation fully.

Regarding the evolution of news media consumption, Alex acknowledges the challenge of meeting heightened audience expectations in the digital age. Despite the plethora of information sources, CNN aims to remain relevant by continuously engaging audiences with compelling content and maintaining their trust.

Looking ahead, both Amanda and Alex are confident in CNN's ability to navigate the complexities of the digital landscape, leveraging collaboration and innovation to drive continued growth and success.  Despite being a work in progress, Project Elevate marks a significant milestone towards achieving CNN's digital-first future. Leaning into the new space created by the project, Alex is excited to leverage the momentum and credibility earned through this process to initiate bolder design projects within the digital space.

With respect to Alex’s contribution to the project and leadership style, Amanda commended his business acumen and people skills, “Alex is definitely a very strong people manager...dynamics are a big part of the job. He has a really good approach to that, always fighting for his people and setting them up for success. I think Alex has a really good business mind too...he's an overall leader...he can look at a problem in different ways and is a contributor in that way.”