Streamlined News Portal for Role-Based Workflows
Designed multi-portal system reducing moderation time by 40% for admins, moderators and creators.
Project Overview
Helped service based company to design a role-based news portal wants a internal usage web application (for admin, moderator, creator, end user) and a mobile app (for end user) within the tight 1 month duration, with a budget of $ Four digit. My goal was to streamline internal operations and create a smooth reading experience across web and mobile on design for users while staying within the agreed scope and timeline. After discuss the needs, problems, number of screens and the respective time will take and the budget, we confirmed the project and get started.
Product Overview
The news portal project is designed as an all-in-one digital platform for managing and delivering news content, serving four distinct user roles: admin, moderator, creator, and end user (reader). Its purpose is to streamline how news organizations create, approve, and publish articles while providing readers with a clean, accessible news experience on any device also added some features.
The Problem & The Solution
Complex publishing flows can slow down content creation and updates.
Streamlined publishing pipeline: Implemented end-to-end flows (draft → review → approve) cutting time-to-publish by 50%.
Lack of transparency about moderation decisions (why a post was rejected, timelines).
Make separate section for reject reason and maintain the reason history for each rejected posts
Manual role/permission management can become error‑prone at scale.
Admin only can create role and permissions so create a separate tab for create role.
Limited analytics makes it hard to know what content performs best.
Add Analytics of total posts, views, likes, shares, comments, Top Performing Posts, Top Performing categories, Top Performing tags.
Poor comment tools can make community management time‑consuming. Toxic or unmoderated comments can reduce trust and comfort.
Enable separate tab for manage comments.
Hard to find relevant news in cluttered or generic feeds.
Enable the category filter option to let user to read news with specific category
Lack of personalization leads to low engagement and fewer repeat visits.
while onboarding let the users to choose their favorite category also can let user to make changes on setting tab.
Poor accessibility (font, contrast, layout) makes long reading sessions tiring.
As per the requirement project constrains user can enable / disable dark theme for better readability low eye strain.
The Process
connected with PM to discuss the project brief. Initially gave clarification about my process and respected duration for each steps. This gave clarification of the stages and duration to them too.
Stakeholder research & User research
For internal roles, I ran a stakeholder interview with the admin (primary stakeholder) through PM to understand current problems, requirements, and priorities for admin, moderator, creator flows and collected all data.
For readers, I conducted qualitative and quantitative research and also get data from internet blogs, post comments, competitor feedback on review sections. Then arranged the data in sort of User categories with their needs and problems
Competitor research
Asked for the direct competitors from the stakeholders and the user. From this I got to know the potential competitors names as follows Inshorts, Dailyhunt, Google News.
From those data, classified those into Strength, Weakness and Opportunities for Differentiation.
Affinity Mapping & Brainstorming
Created affinity mapping to clustered needs and pain points into prioritized features.
Arranged all data that got from the researches into separate groups. Later I will consider those groups into separate features, and priorities them to implement on design.
In Brainstorming session with PM, gave solutions to each and every needs and problems pointed in the affinity mapping.
Create Flow chart (user flow) and connections between the flows
Together with the PM, I translated the prioritized features into user flows for each role, validated them, and then built an information architecture that mapped screens, components, and core interactions for web and mobile.
This structure clarified which role sees which tools, how content moves from creation to publication, and how readers discover and consume news and all other features
Mid fidelity wireframe and Prototype
Created mid‑fidelity wireframes based on the flows and IA, iterated with the PM to confirm layout and then only moved into visual design.
Design Style & UI design
After prepared a moldboard and design style, I designed UI for the first three key screens, gathered feedback, refined them, and used these as the visual system for the remaining screens. I make aware the client/stakeholder about that the rest of screens will follow the same theme and system that the first 3 screens you confirmed. This is the process I followed to avoid unwanted heavy changes after design the UI fully.
Test the UI with prototype & Final handoff
Tested the UI with Users and fixed the problems arise and also confirmed everything with Stakeholder and the PM.
The final deliverables included design style document and UI of all admin, moderator, creator, and end user on web app, plus end‑user UI on mobile.
I documented the design style (colors, typography) and provided a structured handoff to development, enabling the team to implement the portal within the next 1‑month.
Impacts
Focused on clean, role-tailored interfaces. Post-handoff, the platform enabled faster publishing (target: 50% reduction in time-to-live), clearer role separation (zero permission overlaps), and scalable growth. Hypothetical metrics include 30% lower moderation backlog and 25% higher reader retention via better discovery—validated through internal walkthroughs.
