Behind the scenes of the WSJ.com overhaul

Dow Jones creative director Himesh Patel, who led the re-design of its digital products over the past year from iOS to Android, the new WSJ.com and the watch app, was interviewed on its website.

Here is an excerpt:

Why is now the right time to give WSJ.com a new look and feel?
HP: Since our last redesign back in 2008 the world has changed dramatically. The rapid development of mobile is significantly changing reading habits. When we launched in 2008, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Lehman, fewer than 10% of readers were on mobile devices; today almost half of our visitors are on mobile. Readers now expect to consume content on multiple devices. The WSJ.com redesign is adapting to this change in behavior by taking advantage of new technologies that enable readers to access WSJ in whatever way they want – phone, phablet, tablet, desktop.

Is there a particular feature of the new wsj.com that you and your team are most proud of?
HP: Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of the exercise was unravelling the challenge of “responsive design” across screen sizes. This was a huge undertaking and particularly challenging. Our approach was to break the content areas down into interchangeable modules, and then reconfigure them for the difference screen sizes. At key milestones in the process, we invited readers to critique our designs. We started the redesign at the beginning of last year with the launch of WSJD, followed by a new video center, markets data pages, article pages, and a new politics section – Capital Journal. The feedback we received from our readers was critical, and it helped inform our thinking on how to structure our new homepage.

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