Eikon Top News
Leading the UX redesign of the most-used application on the Thomson Reuters Eikon financial platform, reaching hundreds of thousands of professionals globally.
The platform's most visible app, squeezed into a fraction of the screen.
Top News was the single most-used application on the Eikon terminal, the first thing hundreds of thousands of financial professionals saw when they started their workday. But nobody had looked closely at how it was actually being used.
Through platform analytics, I discovered that the majority of users were running Top News in a small portion of their screen because they had so many other Eikon applications open simultaneously. The app had been designed for a full-width view, but almost nobody was using it that way. The experience was effectively broken for the most common use case, and nobody in the organisation had identified it.
The platform had no concept of responsive design. Nothing on Eikon adapted to different window sizes. This wasn't just a Top News problem. It was a platform-wide gap.
The original Top News: designed for full-width, but rarely used that way.
Competitor analysis informing the redesign direction.
One designer, full ownership of the UX, a platform-wide impact.
I was the sole UX designer on the project, responsible for the entire UX workstream: information architecture, wireframes, prototyping, usability research, workshop facilitation, and stakeholder alignment. I worked closely with a UI designer who handled the visual layer and a team of four developers. The project ran for eight months from research through to launch.
I redesigned Top News from the ground up with responsive behaviour as the foundation, not an afterthought. Using the analytics data, I determined the most common window sizes across trading desks and designed a layout system with breakpoints that matched real usage patterns. This wasn't just a responsive redesign of one app. I created the responsive design guidelines for the entire Eikon platform, the first of their kind, which were then adopted by design teams across other product areas.
I ran structured usability studies with traders and analysts across multiple rounds, testing progressively higher-fidelity prototypes. I facilitated cross-functional workshops with editorial, engineering, and product stakeholders to manage the tension between information density and usability at different screen sizes. The editorial team needed their content hierarchy preserved, engineering needed feasible breakpoints, and product needed the redesign to ship on schedule. I held that alignment throughout.
Responsive design guidelines created for the Eikon platform, adopted across product teams.
Solved a problem nobody knew existed, then changed how the platform was built.
The redesigned Top News launched to overwhelmingly positive feedback. It solved a frustration users had lived with but never articulated: an app they used every day, designed for a screen size they never gave it. The responsive redesign meant Top News finally worked in the way people actually used it.
More significantly, the responsive design guidelines I created became the standard for the entire Eikon platform. Other product teams adopted them for their own applications. It was the first time responsive design existed anywhere on Eikon, and it started with this project.
The work was featured on Thomson Reuters' public-facing news display, used to showcase the platform to clients and visitors. I was invited to present the research process and responsive design approach at a conference following the launch. The project also led to my promotion.
Created responsive design guidelines adopted across the entire Eikon platform
Sole UX designer: IA, wireframes, research, prototyping, stakeholder alignment
Analytics revealed a critical usability issue nobody had identified
Invited to present the process and approach after launch
The redesigned Top News featured on Thomson Reuters' public-facing display.