Selected Product Work

Eater App Collaborative Feature App Expansion

Take the headache out of planning a group dinner

A group dining planning tool designed to drive new user acquisition, increase app engagement, and create new restaurant partnership opportunities.

At a glance

Eater has built its value around trusted editorial recommendations and social discovery, helping people find restaurants through expert guides, curated lists, and the dining choices of people they follow.

However, planning a meal with other people remains a fragmented experience. Users can discover restaurants, create personal lists, share recommendations, and make reservations, but they cannot collaboratively manage a restaurant shortlist, collect group preferences, coordinate attendance, or share reservation details through a unified workflow.

I explored how Eater could extend its existing mobile platform with a collaborative dining planner, connecting restaurant discovery to the practical work of organizing a group meal.

The opportunity extends beyond usability. By allowing organizers to invite friends, family, and coworkers into a shared planning experience, Eater could create a new acquisition channel, increase engagement with its existing content, and establish additional opportunities for restaurant partnerships and advertising.

The proposed solution connects collaborative restaurant selection, preference collection, attendance confirmation, and reservation coordination in one continuous experience.

Role
Lead Product Designer throughout discovery, design, implementation, and launch

Timeline
April - July 2026

Team

1 Product Directior • 1 Lead Product Designer • 1 Product Designer (me)

Partners

Editorial • Product Strategy

Responsibilities

Product design • Business strategy • Prototyping

Business Opportunity

Turn operational cost into owned capability

Sponsored content depended on a licensed third-party tool to recirculate readers to targeted articles and help campaigns meet distribution goals. While effective in helping generate revenue, it also increased operational overhead. Leadership identified the opportunity to bring that capability in-house by replacing the third-party solution with an o&o article recirculation tool.

The Challenge

Increase article recirculation without interrupting the reading experience.

The tool had to encourage readers to continue into another article without feeling like an advertisement or interrupting the experience they came for. At the same time, it needed to work across multiple publishing brands with very different visual identities. The solution had to adapt to different typography, layouts, content types, and responsive breakpoints while remaining one reusable tool that Engineering could maintain.

The solution needed to balance three priorities:

Business

Replace a licensed third-party product, reduce operational overhead, and create a reusable tool that could support future distribution needs.

User Experience

Keep readers engaged by making the next article feel like a natural continuation instead of a recommendation.

Platform

Support multiple brands, desktop and mobile, and live CMS content while preserving each publication's editorial identity.

Product strategy

Business

  • Replace a licensed third-party tool with an internal solution

  • Reduce operational overhead

  • Increase article recirculation across owned properties

Operations

  • Give editorial teams control over promoted content

  • Create a reusable tool that could scale across multiple publishing brands

As a team, we defined a clear set of goals before exploring solutions:

User Experience

  • Help readers naturally discover another article

  • Preserve the reading experience without introducing unnecessary friction

  • Make the transition into the next story feel seamless

Engineering

  • Support live CMS content across desktop and mobile

  • Adapt to different brand styles without building separate tools for every publication

Design Process

My goal: Design a tool that would draw readers in

I first needed to understand how readers naturally moved from one story to the next and how other publishers approached article recirculation. At the same time, I worked closely with Product, Editorial, and Engineering to understand the technical constraints, editorial expectations, and operational needs that would shape the solution.

In my research and design process I focused on:

  • Understanding how readers discover their next article

  • Exploring different ways to present live article content

  • Designing a flexible tool that could adapt across multiple brands

  • Refining the experience through editorial and engineering feedback

Understanding reader behavior

How could we make readers want to continue into another article?

I started by studying how major publishers encouraged readers to keep reading. I also reviewed our existing experience and internal data, which showed that article previews consistently drove more recirculation than headline-only links. That established my direction: replace static recommendations with a fuller article preview that felt like the beginning of another story.

Competitive analysis and exploring different visual treatments

Exploring the reading experience

What information is enough to create curiosity?

I explored different combinations of headlines, imagery, metadata, and article excerpts to find the right balance. The goal was to reveal enough of the next story to encourage another click without overwhelming readers. I also tested how the experience should adapt between desktop and mobile.

Early exploratory wireframes considering hierarchy, necessary elements, visual balance

Designing for scale

How could one tool work across multiple brands?

The tool needed to render live content from the CMS while adapting to different typography, layouts, and editorial styles. As the designs evolved, it became clear that a single solution wouldn't preserve the visual identity of every publication. Working with Product, Editorial, and Engineering, we landed on two reusable templates: one for Vox Media publications and one for New York Magazine properties. This preserved each brand's visual identity without creating a bespoke solution for every site.

Lo-fi mocks for stakeholder consideration

Collaboration

How to get buy-in from multiple stakeholders?

Because the tool would appear across many publications, I shared concepts early and often with Editorial, Product, Engineering, and leadership. Reviews helped refine everything from teaser length and content hierarchy to responsive behavior and edge cases. Those conversations also uncovered technical opportunities, like reusing existing CMS capabilities, which reduced engineering effort while making the tool scalable.

Key Decision & Tradeoff

Can we built one tool for all without compromising each publication's identity?

Question

How could one article recirculation tool work across multiple publishing brands without feeling out of place?

Research

The tool needed to launch across Vox Media's publishing network, including both legacy Vox brands and New York Magazine properties. Although each publication had its own visual identity, the two groups had evolved independently and followed noticeably different editorial design patterns. I worked closely with Editorial, Product, and Engineering throughout the design process, gathering feedback from each publication to ensure the experience felt native before launch.

Decision

Our original goal was a single design that could scale everywhere. As the work progressed, it became clear that one solution would force unnecessary compromises. Instead, we created two reusable templates: one for Vox Media publications and one for New York Magazine properties. Each template inherited the typography, layouts, spacing, and visual language of its respective brand family while sharing the same underlying functionality.

Tradeoff

Supporting two templates required more engineering work than a single implementation, but significantly less than building bespoke versions for every publication.

Business Impact

Well-designed article previews created a compelling reason to continue reading, increasing article recirculation which supported the broader goal of increasing article impressions while reducing reliance on paid content distribution.

Template consistency worked across Vox Media brands (above), but didn’t preserve New York Magazine’s distinct identity (below).

Final Product

A flexible tool built for readers and publishers

The final product replaced a third-party article recirculation tool with an internal experience that rendered live article content directly from the CMS. Instead of asking readers to choose from a list of headlines, the tool presented the beginning of another story, making it easier to continue reading naturally.

The tool adapted across desktop and mobile while inheriting each publication's typography, colors, and editorial styling. We created two reusable templates that preserved the identities of Vox Media and New York Magazine publications and kept the engineering implementation manageable.

  • NY Magazine | Vulture

  • Vox Media | Vox

  • NY Magazine | The Cut

  • Vox Media | The Verge

Outcome

Reduced annual distribution costs

Reduce annual distribution costs by 6% by replacing a licensed third-party article recirculation tool. (Based on internal reported savings)

Exceeded early projections

The tool generated 17% more savings than projected during its first three months after launch, validating the decision to replace the third-party solution with an o&o product.

Scaled across multiple platforms

Built a single tool that served two brand families and adapted across three CMSs.

Reflection

Good products solve business problems and user problems together

This project started as a cost-saving initiative, but the solution only worked because it also created an excellent reading experience. Readers were more likely to continue into another article when the transition felt natural, which then allowed the business to reduce reliance on a third-party tool. It reinforced that the strongest product decisions create value for both the business and the users.

Scalability shouldn't come at the expense of brand identity

My first instinct was to design a single experience that worked everywhere. Through collaboration with Editorial, Product, and Engineering, it became clear that preserving each publication's identity was more important than enforcing complete consistency. Creating two reusable templates required a little more engineering effort, but it avoided a much larger maintenance burden than building custom solutions for every publication. It was a good reminder that the most scalable solution isn't always the one with the fewest versions.

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