Reimagined CNN’s news experience to address the U.S. media trust crisis. Co-led UX strategy and designed transparency features for younger, more skeptical audiences.
Jan-Aug 2025
Rachel H, Vachan B
Problem
Public trust in news was dropping. and CNN could no longer rely on its legacy brand to carry credibility. Younger audiences weren’t loyal by default.
YouGov 2025
Strategy
Research reframed the problem: it was not just about trust in journalism. It was about the lack of transparency into how news is made and a growing gap in media literacy.
This led to CNN Lens, a trust-forward transparency layer.
Impact
CNN will be rolling out a new article layout, replacing the legacy experience impacting users on a large scale.
90% of testers reported higher trust in CNN after engaging with the new experience.
Elements like sourcing and authorship shifted from overlooked details to must-haves.
Tools work only if people use them
Testing revealed Lens was too far from where attention lived. Users found it tedious to click into it for every article. I iterated toward keeping cues visible mid-read, not just post-scroll.
Trust lives in people
Primary research showed that the brand felt corporate and political. I tapped into the instinct to trust people over systems by making journalists more visible, relatable, and central .
Using behavior patterns to drive a new layout
Readers scanned the image before anything else. I restructured the layout to place essential cues where attention naturally lands.
