November 2005 - August 2007

el norte

El Norte, a local newspaper founded in 1938, is a print and digital newspaper, currently part of Grupo Reforma, the second largest printed media company in Mexico and Latin America.

It also owns the largest content-intensive web sites in Mexico, which were in the process of evolving to meet the changing media and information landscape during my tenure in the organization. 

How it Started

The quick paced environment of the daily news cycle helped me and my team develop tools and strategies that translated to quality products in short sprints while simultaneously refreshing key visual content in the main website.

My main goals were the planning and deployment of formats and best practices for product development that resulted in almost 50% time saved for each project.

Experimenting

During my tenure, I helped redesign the web section “sociales suburbanas” (local society pages) working with sketches, wireframes, color palettes and icons as well as proposing a section named “Top 5 People Search”, related to weekly searches which increased traffic to our website.

I also found potential for improvement of our products by analyzing feedback from our readers, developing a strategy and implementing it in our products in order to improve their experience.

Implementing

After implementing strategies developed by user feedback, reader response was encouraging as there was an increase in positive feedback and the number of complaints decreased.

I developed interactive products focused on the 2006 Mexican Presidential Elections. During this period I reinforced my ability to work efficiently and accurately under pressure, thriving in a constantly changing environment.