DUration
April – November 2024
Role
Product Designer,
QA Testing
Team
3 Designers, 1 Product Manager,
1 Program Manager, 7 Engineers
Background
The CNN Election Center serves as the ultimate digital destination for U.S. Elections, engaging millions of users with real-time election results, interactive maps, and data visualizations.
In preparation for the 2024 U.S. General Election, I worked on product design and QA testing for the end-to-end Election Center experience, focusing on optimizing owned-and-operated pages and collaborating with the broader organization to improve entry points and enhance recirculation strategies.
Opportunity
Elections have historically driven scale, but most users are not engaged. A smaller group accounts for a disproportionate share of engagement.
The national results pages have historically driven the most unique visitors and time spent on CNN’s Election Center. After the 2020 election, we analyzed user behavior —visits, page views, and time spent— to determine our user segments.
While Dabblers and Seekers make up the majority of CNN Election users, they do not spend a lot of time on CNN. Enthusiasts and Wonks, on the other hand, while there are so little of them, they spend a lot of time on CNN.
Solutions
Transform CNN Elections' reach into an engaged user base through improved mobile-first, contextualized experiences.
Improving entry points into the Election Center
Creating flexible and modular components to be placed anywhere on the CNN homepage and the Live Story
Using data-driven components to summarize the state of the race
Engages our "one-and-done" users
Catch up quickly, check back in later
Engaging political enthusiasts with interactive data visualizations
National map on national results page
Overview for "one-and-done" audience
Capabilities for deeper discovery
State result pages with county level data
Adding premium features to personalize the election experience and boost user registrations.
Register users via a logged-in experience
Your Election
Road to 270
Set the groundwork for new direct-to-consumer revenue streams
Digital Magic Wall
Watch CNN live
Research
Most users access the Election Center via mobile homepage, with national results being the top Election Center page.
Insights from the 2022 U.S. Midterm Primaries show users found Election Center content through three main channels: 49% via homepage, 23% via search, and 20% via other CNN pages. In the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, 28% of CNN homepage uniques visited the Election Center next, with the Presidential Results page being the most clicked.
Voting Data, Maps, Analysis, Contextual Education, and County Results were ranked as the top five most important features for election coverage.
In 2023, we researched our key user segments, defining the behaviors, attitudes, and needs between our casual viewers versus our more engaged political enthusiasts.
Strategy & Planning
This journey map outlines our strategic planning process, identifying user needs and Election Center products across acquisition, engagement, conversion, and retention phases, while highlighting areas for improvement and innovation. We aligned with subject matter experts and editorial partners to ensure that relevant product experiences are surfaced at the right time.
Key metric Goals
Daily Unique Visitors
Goal: 5.4M
Average Time Spent per Visitor
Goal: 11.5 minutes
Page Views
Goal: 16.2M
New User Registrations
Goal: 162,800
Iterations & Collaborations
Extensive collaboration across cross-functional teams was needed to ensure consistency, usability, and seamless integration across platforms.
User testing
2 Main Improvements
The main design challenge was creating a hub page that acts as the entry point for election results, aimed at boosting recirculation and guiding users to key pages to increase time spent and engagement. We conducted two user tests to identify which components drive more successful clicks from the hub page to national pages (e.g., Presidential, Senate, House).
Driving more successful clicks.
Share Cards and Ribbon elements above the Map-Lite module drive more successful clicks.
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Desktop testers found the hub page to be overwhelming.
The hub page feels so cluttered and overwhelming to the point where users do not know what they should be looking at.
Giving components more breathing room
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Final Designs
LEARNINGS
Do not be afraid to work out in the open, not in the shadows. The importance of collaboration and quality testing, and how essential trust is in your team to ensure success in the design-development process.
Do not hesitate to ask questions, especially if you are a newcomer. As embarrassing as it may seem, it is how you gain expertise and become a subject matter expert over time.
Let's get in touch!
Resume