Fabric - A vanilla brand created to test the design system
INTRODUCTION
Say hello to Fabric!
Fabric was a design system concept created to manage the portfolio of 70+ publications Immediate Media own. It aimed to replace the existing unscalable CMS’s the company had running for each individual brand. Fabric would allow the business to maintain, fix and develop new features across all brands seamlessly. Through this digital platform, IM could build a single digital feature but deliver it across all brands. Fabric would allow our team to continually innovate and find new ways for our brands to diversify revenue streams whilst encouraging deeper customer engagement.
Fabric’s framework made it easy to introduce new brands to the system and still give a unique visual design
THE CHALLENGE
One CMS to rule them all!
With 70+ brands in their portfolio, Immediate Media Co had a long waiting list of requests to improve and even launch some of their print publications to digital sites. Brands managed their own sites through various CMS’s which made maintenance and feature innovation across the business almost impossible. The majority of the tech and design team’s time was consumed by the patching and maintenance of dated buggy systems. Through a single CMS, brands could easily access more features and provide greater experiences to their users. This would allow each brand freedom to create and craft new and unique content to their sites without the need to involve tech. This would then allow the tech and development teams to focus on innovating the system, unlocking and allowing for more engaging and personalised features.
Immediate Media Co brands
MY ROLE
Maintaining and creating at scale
My role was within the ‘premium & subscriptions’ scrum team, creating patterns and design language. My day-to-day involved working with a UX researcher, PM, front-end and back-end developers. We were assigned several brands to champion which included Gardeners’ World & History Extra. I assessed the feature needs of each brand and helped to translate their existing site and content onto the Fabric platform. I maintained a relationship with brand stakeholders to gain support for design decisions made. I would then return to the wider design team and present the brands needs. I would review design suggestions and changes on a bi-weekly basis with a wider group of team designers. This forum was a great opportunity to share feedback, work and learnings found from each others explorations.
Page analysis undertook by myself to understand History Extra's previous homepage features
Key responsibilities:
Creating reusable universal design patterns & themes that can be applied across brands
Taking simple wire-frames through to high-fidelity visual interface concepts
Designing from a ‘mobile first’ approach to assure all content is easily accessible from every platform and device
Improving admin interfaces with the introduction of simple yet self-explanatory icons to allow for easy page building and customisation
Taking old interfaces and through the use of research and data analysis providing more suitable and cleaner designs that improve the user’s experience and aid in achieving the business strategy
Translating the previous History Extra homepage onto Fabric and then launching
Motivated to visualise product ideas and changes quickly, I introduced prototyping softwares such as Axure RP and Invision into my daily process. These prototypes offered the team and I the opportunity to test ideas quickly with a realistic user experience, avoiding costly development time. Prototyping was incorporated into the design team’s process.
Azure RP was a powerful prototyping and testing tool for components, logic and UI / functionality.
Creating key fabric features in prototypes allowed for comprehensive visual and interaction testing
Using prototyping to explore premium content motion and interactions
THE RESULT
You get a new feature, you get a new feature, everybody gets a new feature!
The Fabric system grew significantly in the time I was there allowing smaller brands to take advantage of the new features and functionality that had been introduced to the platform. These new features drove an increase in user engagement, discovery and content personalisation. One of the most successful features I helped launched was ‘premium’ content. This is where brands offered subscriptions to access unique and personalised content to their users. We began by testing this with the release of Gardeners’ World’s ‘Secret Garden’. This was made on Fabric first which allowed for other brands to also create their own subscription based services digitally.
An example of how a single page designed in fabric translated across multiple brands
MY TAKEAWAYS
One for all and all for one!
Working at Immediate Media Co on the Fabric design team was an amazing experience! It introduced me to designing at scale and I loved it! Although frustrating and time-consuming to test, the elegance of designing a solution that was so multifaceted and worked in all imaginable scenarios was great.
Slowly seeing more features roll out and being part of a large design team was beneficial to my development. It was also my first experience working in AGILE software development. Again, another experience I valued and appreciated. Working in short timeframes to develop value for brands was a process I found rewarding.