Shaping the Future of WSJ+: A Personalized, Cross-Brand Dashboard
WSJ+ is a subscriber experience that brings together Dow Jones’ four major publications—The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch, and Investor’s Business Daily. To modernize how subscribers discover and engage with content, we designed an AI-powered dashboard that curates stories across brands and adapts to different user behaviors.
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My Role
Lead UX Designer
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The Team
Business Strategist, Product Manager, Visual Designer, and Project Manager
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Timeline
This 8-week project includes research, wireframe, design, user testing, and annotation.
Experience Preview
Desktop
Customizing the Dashboard
Desktop
Discovering Storylines
Overview
What's WSJ+
WSJ+ is a bundled subscription platform that gives users access to four Dow Jones titles: The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, MarketWatch, and Investor’s Business Daily. While the bundle offers strong value, most users sign up for WSJ—and stick with it.
The Challenge
01
Increase engagement with the WSJ+ Dashboard itself.
02
Spark curiosity and interaction with other lesser-known titles, in a way that feels natural and valuable.
Design Goal
Design Process
Grounded in user research and technical constraints, our approach focused on enhancing the existing user experience without disrupting familiar behaviors. Many WSJ+ subscribers are loyal to a single brand (like WSJ or Barron’s), and development resources were limited. The UX strategy prioritized modular additions that delivered new value through personalization and content recirculation, encouraging cross-brand exploration without requiring users to relearn core interactions.
Persona
The client provided detailed user research across multiple audience segments. I analyzed the findings and distilled them into three core personas, based on shared needs, urgency, and feasibility from a design and engineering perspective. These focused personas became the foundation for prioritizing features and tailoring content experiences that could scale efficiently.
User Flow
Rather than rebuilding the site architecture, I mapped a desired user flow that layered enhancements onto the existing system. This allowed us to maintain users’ familiar paths—such as article-first discovery—while introducing new WSJ+ modules that surface personalized content and encourage deeper engagement across brands.
Wireframe
Using the top three needs surfaced from user research, I led the design exploration to validate new ideas and content formats.
01
User Need
More Relevant and Flexible Personalization
Solution
Enhanced the existing personalization system with more configurable modules, curated topic selection, and multiple entry points to surface tailored content throughout the WSJ+ experience.
02
User Need
Ownable Storylines
Solution
Leveraging the depth across all titles, My Storylines was introduced as a new module that enables users to follow evolving narratives. AI-assisted curation was explored, but due to content limitations, the initial implementation will be manually managed.
03
User Need
Greater Visibility into Cross-Brand Value
Solution
Subtle yet strategic cross-brand components—WSJ+ Global Banner, WSJ+ Side Rail, and Brand Highlights—were designed to increase visibility of the other titles. These elements introduce relevant stories from across the brands without disrupting the user’s flow, helping users discover value naturally and strengthening engagement within the WSJ+ ecosystem.
User Testing
In collaboration with the client’s user research team, I led a focused round of testing with Sprint 1 prototypes to validate early concepts. While the team had deep confidence in the strategic direction—grounded in their prior large-scale research—this round surfaced actionable insights on new modules and interactions. The feedback helped refine key features and informed priorities for Sprint 2.
Final Design
I collaborated with developers to determine the best approach for documenting user flows, interactions, and population methods, considering the complexity of this experience. Through detailed annotations that captured every scenario, including edge cases and logic, I ensured clarity, minimized confusion, and supported a seamless development process.
Development
The client handled all development in-house. To support a smooth handoff, I delivered detailed UX annotations and collaborated with the strategy team to define content recommendations aligned with user needs. The rollout of the new design is ongoing, with WSJ+ gradually mapping the updated components and modules into production.
🧑💻If you’re a WSJ+ subscriber, check out the latest version of the dashboard live on the site!
Recorded on May 31st, 2025
