MSN Elections Platform 2024 | Product Design
Project Introduction
The MSN News Feed is a source of personalized content for Microsoft users, with many entry-points across the Windows, Edge, Bing and Microsoft Start mobile app platforms. With 2024 being a pivotal elections year for both India and the United States, there was an opportunity to build a dedicated experience to inform users about valuable content, registration details and results.
Opportunity Definition
Given the massive reach of the MSN News Feed, and the depth of media coverage for these elections, we had the opportunity to partner with Networks such as CNN, ABC News, USA Today and Times of India to show exclusive LIVE coverage of the Debates, Conventions, Results and more. By working closely with these various networks, we could highlight highlight coverage for our users through the MSN News Feed, while also navigating new users to those partner platforms in mutually beneficial ways. Another opportunity, was that by designing the elections platform for one election, we could re-leverage the experience framework for future elections and save dozens of resource hours.
Partner with networks to deliver exclusive, in-depth live coverage
Easily host multiple elections with fewer resources by designing and engineering framework intended for re-use
Drive users to elections content via strategic, cross-org partnerships such as the Windows, Bing and Edge Browser teams
Designing the Product Experience
Work began with brainstorms alongside product management and our localized elections specialist to envision what we could potentially accommodate on the platform. This process demanded that we understand what content/media options are available, and also that we consider how best to deliver value to users as a minimum viable product so we can set target goals from which to build upon. The ideal experience would be able to accommodate the following set of features:
Live Video Stream for Elections Debate & Convention coverage
Live Blog Feed for Elections Debate & Convention coverage
Windows and Edge NTP News & Results cards
Elections Calendar of important event dates
Editorial Picks News Carousel
Results for the Presidency
Results for the Congress
Results for the Senate
Dedicated Elections Ads
Register to Vote card
The next phase involved researching competitor experiences, exploring art-direction by way of mood-boards and gathering relevant assets from partner orgs within Microsoft such as the Bing team. Following these steps, we were able to bring concrete ideas forward to the Engineering team. Engineers helped validate the feasibility of implementation and move on to design.
At this stage, I worked closely with my Product Manager to prioritize features and provide detailed specs for each. Considerations for design include light/dark mode variations, responsive behaviors and close adherence to established styles/components wherever possible to limit any friction or tech debt. From this point, working closely with the engineering teams was smooth. I took part in all of the testing sessions to help quality control the fit and finish. Through this process, as a team we were able to ship all of the features we proposed, minus the results for the Senate & Congressional races due to limited engineering resources.
Project Results
The 2024 Elections saw record-breaking traffic to MSN:
68M user engagements with MSN Elections coverage
2.46M active unique users (AUU) to the US Elections hub
3.5M Bing search queries driven by MSN partnership
150K increase in topic follows for “US Elections”
Project Members
Design Leads: Paul Methot (MSN), Kelly Lamar (Bing)
Product Managers: Daniel Ho (Lead), Antonina Chapor (Business Relations), Joanna Sinclair (Content)
Engineering: Jenelle Yonkman, Akshatha Patil, Ahmed Mohamed, Sabry Ragab, Anant Jain, Chris Zhang
