A full platform redesign for the Netherlands' most-reached news brand, built to scale with millions of daily users.
NOS Product Redesign
Product concept · UX Strategy · 2019 – 2022
NOS is the largest news brand in the Netherlands. Its website and app together reach more daily users than any other Dutch news platform. By 2019, three quarters of all daily traffic came from smartphones and the NOS app was growing year on year in an increasingly competitive market. Radio and television reach had been declining, making the digital product the primary touchpoint for millions of people. The existing platform needed to evolve, not just visually but structurally, to keep pace with audience expectations and stay ahead of competitors.
The goal was to refresh the NOS experience across iOS, Android and web from the ground up.
This meant designing a flexible grid system for a wide range of content types, including richer video formats, while also introducing a regional news dimension to better serve local audiences. The brief called for new features to deepen engagement: a sports agenda with livestream notifications, short vertical video formats, an expanded football scoreboard and improved tablet layouts. Underpinning it all was a comprehensive component library to bring consistency and scalability across every platform.
Together with Dionne van Dijk, I was responsible for the complete design process. From concept and UX strategy through visual design, prototyping and presentations, to the component library and post-launch feature development. At times this also included managing the product backlog. We worked in close collaboration with three large development teams from kick-off to launch and beyond.
Process
Several of the features and much of the component framework built for this redesign had their origins in the NOS Olympic Games Tokyo 2021 platform. That project proved what was possible, and this redesign was the opportunity to bring it to the full NOS product. From there, concepts were translated and refined, with stakeholders kept in the loop from the start to align editorial and strategic perspectives. Usability testing with Lookback provided direct insight into how people interacted with the interface, and findings fed straight into feature refinement with developers. The component library grew steadily alongside the product, becoming a living system. Development kicked off in early 2020 and culminated in the public launch in April 2021. I stayed involved through 2022 to continue iterating and expanding the system.
Getting new features approved was the central tension of the project. Newsroom editors were understandably cautious about additional responsibilities on top of an already demanding workload. Making the case required more than good design rationale. Usability testing became the key tool for building internal support. The data showed clearly that users responded well and that the features positioned NOS more competitively. That evidence turned hesitation into alignment.
Results
The redesigned platform launched in April 2021 and was immediately well received. By Q1 2021, NOS.nl and the app together attracted an average of 4 million unique visitors per day and 10 million per week, cementing NOS as the most-reached news brand in the Netherlands. The flexible design framework remains in use to this day. What started as a refresh became a foundation the NOS product and editorial teams could continue to build on.
Unique visitors per day
4 million
Livestreams
21 million
Credits
This project was a team effort. I worked closely with Dionne van Dijk (digital designer) and collaborated across three large development teams who brought the designs to life.
Tools used:
Sketch
Miro
Lookback
Jira