Condé Nast

Establishing a new content format for live coverage, to help brands own the moment.

Problem

Live events are an increasingly important touch point for brands to engage with their audiences, but editors lack the storytelling tools to own audience attention during these key tentpole moments.

Objective

Increase audience engagement by building new, dynamic editorial capabilities—that also include optimizations for search, page ranking, and discovery— that help brands amplify their editorial authority and “own the moment” during live events.

Key Results

Increase average time spent:

   • Baseline: 2:11 mins
   • Target: 3:00 mins
   • Actual: Average 4:00+ min

Increase average traffic:

   • Baseline: 20-30k UVs
   • Target: 40-60k UVs
   • Actual: 300k+ UVs

Research

Our work began with an initial phase of qualitative research with cross-functional stakeholders and leadership, to identify the key needs, capabilities, and opportunities for design exploration.

Sketching sessions helped us to cast a wide net:

Card sorting exercises helped us narrow in on our challenge:

Design ideation sprints were collaborative efforts:

Each sprint work was organized, documented, and shared out:

The Design System

We then created a front-end reader experience based around a stream of "updates" that are instantly published, flexible, and include rich media and deep-linking capabilities. To do this we leveraged existing patterns and components where we could, and made net-new contributions to our global design system, Verso.

The Live Story Template

To house our content, we also created a new page template for Live Stories. The template is fully integrated with the internal ad platform and features a flexible page header as well as a custom, content-aware sticky video player for live-streaming coverage.

For Editors

The back-end editor experience is mobile-first, to support a streamlined publishing workflow that allows editors to post and edit instantly from their phones while on site at events. 

Development

We divided our work into prioritized milestones, leveraged existing elements of our DS, worked in tandem with engineers for rapid build and release of features and functionality, and refined designs in live testing environments.

Our process allowed us to iterate on features while continuing to make incremental steps toward our MVP and hone our longer-term product vision.

Outcomes

Our team brought the Live Story from concept to delivery in just 7 (2-week) sprints.

Since its initial launch for Vanity Fair’s Oscars coverage, nearly all brands have adopted the capability for use during their key tentpole events and have seen increased engagement metrics, and the project was widely seen as a success.

In Vogue’s first use of the new capability, their Met Gala Live Story saw a 318% increase in traffic and a 162% increase in time spent, over their previous year’s coverage. 

© 2025 Kristina Pedicone