Helping a national newspaper rethink its newsroom digital culture through shadowing, design sprints and a strategic roadmap the teams actually adopted.
The National newspaper team launched a 7-week service design initiative to rethink its newsroom structure, content strategy, and collaboration habits.
The goal: to build a future-ready editorial model that's digital by default, without losing what makes the newspaper unique.
Spent one month in-house leading as a Service Designer, responsible for research and workshop facilitation. Collaborated daily with editors, newsroom directors, journalists, data experts, and designers.
Design Thinking methodologies used.
Run with the entire newsroom.
Contributors engaged.
Digital-oriented output after PoC (vs. 15% before).
More than 100 contributors — including journalists, editors, and leadership — actively participated in interviews, workshops, and sprints. The process gave everyone a voice, surfaced key frustrations, and built early alignment around a shared vision for change.
We mapped editorial routines, rituals, and dependencies tied to the print edition. This revealed structural blockers — such as planning cycles and tool mismatches — which reinforced a print-first mindset and made digital experimentation difficult.
Rather than remove the print edition, we repositioned it as a curated output of the digital product. This shift clarified priorities, enabled earlier content decisions, and supported better coordination across channels, reducing double work and deadline tension.
The team co-created a visual, phased roadmap structured around five transformation pillars: editorial strategy, team structure, paper-product decoupling, digital flow optimization, and tech foundations. Each included tactical moves, pilot steps, and ownership paths.
The project combined multiple techniques to uncover newsroom habits and co-create a strategy with real cultural impact.
Used a blend of immersion, ideation, and validation with newsroom staff.
Observed daily work habits and gathered 1:1 insights from correspondents and editors.
Mapped phased rollouts by quarter across strategy, tech, org, and editorial culture.
Most relevant outcomes delivered to set up the new workflows and guide the newsroom to a digital-oriented production.
Reframed team roles, introduced new profiles (Planner, Print Ops team, Community Manager…), and clarified workflows.
5 epic-level change tracks broken down into testable phases.
Prototype to test the new production workflow to track the production nature (digital or print).