The Drupal 7 CMS that ESI Media used was causing a number of inefficiencies across the editorial team. It was slow, clunky and had garnered years of added functionality that made it bloated and hard to teach to someone new. It was decided that Brightsites' FLOW platform would be more performant. However, in its current iteration it would not be fit for purpose as it didn't contain certain functionality required at the Independent and Evening Standard.
As Lead Designer, I was responsible for transforming two critical aspects of the FLOW CMS before its live release: the article creation journey and the layout management feature. I also took a broader view of the editorial workflow, identifying opportunities to reduce platform fragmentation and improve productivity for journalists and editors.
Although the product team sat near editorial in the office, much of our work had historically focused on external users. This project offered a valuable opportunity to empathise with internal teams, uncover their pain points, and design tools that supported their ways of working rather than disrupt them.
I facilitated workshops to break down key editorial tasks – such as publishing articles and managing live blogs – mapping pain points and platform dependencies along the way.
A key insight was that, although the CMS technically supported end-to-end article creation, journalists preferred using familiar tools (e.g. Word, Google Docs) for drafting. Forcing them to abandon these would hinder productivity rather than improve it.
To build deeper understanding, I conducted in-situ ethnographic research during day and night shifts, observing editors and reporters using the current CMS.
This revealed multiple usability issues – including slow load times, awkward workarounds, and moments of visible frustration. I also maintained an open feedback loop, encouraging team members to email observations as they arose. This proved a powerful and ongoing source of insight.
" This project was a great opportunity to understand the frustrations of our journalists and editors, which could help us empathise with their efforts moving forward."
To quantify improvement post-launch, I timed key editorial workflows, such as article publishing, establishing clear benchmarks to measure performance gains once FLOW went live.
I performed a detailed heuristics analysis of the existing article creation interface, identifying usability issues and presenting findings back to the product team. Many of the flagged items were directly addressed in the new UI.
Recognising the growing feature set within FLOW, I conducted a card sort to reorganise settings in a way that felt intuitive to editors. For instance, I grouped related elements such as headlines, visibility, and sensitivity settings, improving clarity and usability. The resulting structure was implemented in the redesigned right-hand panel.
Workflow analysis revealed reliance on third-party tools like Trello and shared spreadsheets to manage article statuses – duplicating effort and introducing inconsistencies. I worked closely with teams to demonstrate how FLOW could consolidate this functionality.
While Trello remained important in the short term, I proposed a gradual transition strategy, highlighting FLOW’s potential to become the single source of truth for article management.
A key focus of my work was redesigning the layout manager – the tool responsible for managing high-traffic pages like the homepage.
The existing implementation in Drupal required multiple views to manage structure and content, increasing cognitive load and error potential. I introduced a new approach that unified layout and content management in a single interface, streamlining the process and reducing friction.
This concept was enthusiastically received – many users said they hadn’t thought such simplification was even possible.
While working closely with editorial teams, I also identified environmental blockers. I recommended providing 1440p monitors to allow editors to see more of their workspace – particularly important given the new layout manager included a live preview of the site at all times. This change was implemented across teams.
I ran regular usability sessions with editorial teams, iterating on design based on real usage patterns. This included changes to article component grouping, the account creation flow, and refinements to microcopy throughout.
The response during rollout was overwhelmingly positive:
“The new layout manager is a huge improvement.”
“The whole thing just works better – faster, clearer, smarter.”
“Publishing is no longer a pain – it's actually intuitive now.”
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