Redesigning Sweden's most-loved news app
Helping SVT News evolve into a faster, more intuitive native app through better navigation, continuous testing and a clearer visual identity.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Company
SVT · 2016–2017
Focus
Product design, UX research, visual design
Impact
Top-rated news app — Reached the highest App Store rating among Swedish news apps, according to the team's follow-up.
Swedish Design Award 2019 — The app received national design recognition.
Continuous user testing — Established a recurring testing practice to inform product decisions across the team.
My role
I joined an established cross-functional team to develop the experience beyond its initial concept.
My main contributions were redesigning navigation, improving the tablet experience, shaping the visual identity and introducing regular user testing.
The challenge
SVT's previous news app was slow, difficult to navigate and received poor user ratings. The team set out to create a faster, simpler and more intuitive native experience for iOS and Android.
The version to the left is the old slow wrapper app. In 2016 a beta app was released. In 2017 we made a redesign and changed navigation system to tab navigation.
Designing a better experience
We evolved the app through continuous releases, introducing tab navigation, push notifications and a refreshed visual identity.
I focused on making navigation more intuitive, improving interactions across devices and establishing a consistent visual language aligned with SVT's new brand.
When we released the new navigation and brand update for Android users, they embraced it immediately!
We identified prioritised user needs and goal for the app early on in the process to help us keep focus.
To make users get a good overview and make the proportions good on Ipad and other tablets we used the same width on content. The only difference was the image ratio for top images on articles.
Learning through feedback
To make user feedback part of everyday product development, I introduced usability testing every three weeks. The sessions helped the team identify friction, evaluate design decisions and involve stakeholders in understanding user needs.
The funny crazy people in the cross functional app team I worked with during my time at SVT.
What I learned
The project reinforced the importance of continuous iteration and involving stakeholders early.
Some needs, including weather information and landscape support on iPad, became clearer after launch. Bringing journalists closer to testing and product decisions also helped build understanding and alignment.
The result was a stronger product shaped by user feedback, close collaboration and ongoing improvement.