Dow Jones / WSJ -
Image Manager
In the dynamic realm of editorial news I led the redesign of Image Manager, a tool that empowers visual media management and sharing in newsrooms so that editors, reporters, and journalists can find what want, when they need it for their breaking news stories
Role
Product Designer
Disciplines
UX/UI, User Research, Prototyping
Status
Launched March 2024
Highlights
MVP designed in 3 weeks and built to scale iteratively for larger newsrooms.
New "Image card" for quick glimpse into important image information & actions
Created simple flow to review AI auto-crops of images, cutting users time taken by at least 50%
Redesigned image manager
Simplified home layout, image card and details page with new cloudinary AI autocropping.
Context
Problem
Editors, Reporters, and Journalists need help finding the right images quickly for their breaking news stories. Meanwhile, decision-makers in the company and newsroom aren't convinced that updating our image system will make a real difference. We need to show them how improving the system can help everyone work faster and better.
Goals
Design a layout that prioritizes clarity and simplicity, enabling users to effortlessly locate desired content.
Develop an intuitive interface for rapid image cropping, ensuring users can swiftly add images to breaking news stories without delays.
Implement visual enhancements and intuitive design elements to enable users to readily access and evaluate important image information, facilitating quick and informed decisions.
Previous home page in Image Manager
Previous image details page in Image Manager
Pain Points
Pages layout are cluttered: users find it hard to maneuver through different pages in order to find & filter for the photos they’re looking for.
Images aren’t cropped: users find it annoyingly time intensive to have to crop every photo for every aspect ratio.
Information that’s not easily accessible: user don’t like that they have to click multiple times to maybe find the image information they were looking for.
Constraints
No data or analytics on how the platform is used today, we have to rely on interviews.
Can’t change the design of the platform too much as the newsroom needs to know how to use the tool immediately.
Time constraints to ramp up the MVP solution to newsrooms each quarter .
Scaleable home design
Simplified the home page design to basic needs & functionality for smaller newsrooms.
New image details card for quick information
Giving users a fast way to quickly skim information about images or take important actions.
Advanced search & filtering at scale
Larger newsrooms need more functionality to filter through millions of images which led us to adding these as we scaled up.
Redesigning with an API foundation
One advantage we had in this exploration was the introduction of Cloudinary API (uses AI to auto-crop images).
User can select an aspect ratio and easily see the image auto-cropped
Quick preview of auto crops
Following user feedback that the process is still too long, I pivoted to redesigning the details page & ratio selection as a thumbnail preview.
Users can now see how the image is AI cropped via thumbnail
Redesigned image manager — current
Simplified home layout, image card and details page with new cloudinary AI autocropping.
Next Steps
Prioritizing information discoverability in layout
As we scale up launching to our largest newsrooms, their needs for more detailed information become increasingly apparent.
Displaying high priority information & actions first, then visuals, and then secondary metadata.