Product strategy
Feature scope, prioritisation and product direction — defined before a single wireframe was drawn.
← All work
Case StudyEnd-to-EndWeb · iOS · Android
The Source
A news aggregation platform — designed, developed, and deployed by one person. Chronological feed, trusted sources, no algorithm.
01 — Overview
Built to solve information overload — without becoming another algorithm.
The Source aggregates news from multiple trusted providers into one place. Users follow the sources they trust, filter by topic tag, and get a chronological feed with no algorithmic ranking or promoted content.
The challenge was making a large volume of news feel organised, fast, and navigable — without the interface becoming as overwhelming as the problem it was built to solve. The product was taken from idea to production as a solo end-to-end project: strategy, UX research, design, full-stack development, and deployment.
2+
Platforms shipped
6
Workstreams led
End-End
Design to deploy
1
Person. All of it.
02 — Responsibilities
Every workstream. One person accountable.
MVP planning
Mapped the minimum viable scope — what to ship first, what to defer, and what to cut entirely.
UX research & flows
User research, competitive analysis, and full user-flow mapping from sign-up through to daily use habits.
UX/UI design
End-to-end interface design — wireframes to pixel-tight Figma files across web and mobile.
Frontend & backend
Full-stack implementation — React/Next.js frontend, Node.js backend, database, and news API integrations.
Deployment & launch
Configured, deployed to production on Hetzner, and launched with monitoring in place.
03 — The key challenge
Enough discovery power to be useful — simple enough to actually use.
A news aggregator can easily become the thing it was built to replace: a firehose of unfiltered content. Every feature added for power — tags, source profiles, trending views, discovery filters — is a step towards the interface that overwhelmed people in the first place. The design had to hold that tension at every decision point.
Needs
Powerful filtering, source management, tag browsing, and trending views
vs
Risk
An interface that feels as overwhelming as the problem it was built to solve
04 — Approach
Every feature earns its place.
The same principle across every surface: show the content people came for, make the controls available without making them mandatory.
/ 01 — The timeline
Core feedChronological. No algorithm. Sources you chose.
The home feed shows articles from followed sources in reverse chronological order. No promoted posts, no recommendation engine, no engagement scoring. Users see exactly what their sources published.
- Chronological by default — timestamp-ordered feed with no hidden ranking.
- Tag filters — one tap to narrow the feed to #conflict, #tech, #economy, or any followed tag.
- Source attribution — every article shows its source with verification status.
iOS · Timeline · Discovery · Trending/ 02 — Discovery & source following
Building your feedFollow sources you trust — nothing else reaches you.
Onboarding starts with source selection: verified news organisations with credibility indicators. Discovery shows all verified sources and tags in one searchable view, with follow/unfollow and source profiles.
- Verified sources only — a curated list of credible news organisations, not open submissions.
- Credibility scoring — correlation score and verification badge on every source profile.
- Tag following — follow a tag and all matching articles surface in your timeline automatically.
iOS · Onboarding & Discovery
iOS · Timeline detail/ 03 — The web experience
DesktopA three-panel layout built for power readers.
The web app uses a persistent left sidebar for source and tag navigation, a central feed column, and a right panel for live integrity stats, trending sources, and recent hashtags. All three are visible without scrolling.
- Persistent navigation — source list always visible; switch context without losing your place.
- Integrity panel — live active user count, total sources, and total articles visible at all times.
- Trending sidebar — top sources and recent hashtags updated in real time.
Web · Timeline
Web · Multi-view/ 04 — Tag system & topic pages
Navigation by topicEvery tag is a fully navigable topic page.
Tapping any hashtag opens a dedicated tag page: post count, top sources covering that topic ranked by volume, and a full chronological feed of recent articles tagged with it. Tags can be followed directly from the page.
- Top sources per tag — see which outlets cover a topic most, ranked by article count.
- Follow from tag page — subscribe to a tag without leaving the context.
- Mute tags — suppress topics from the home feed without unfollowing sources.
iPad · Tag page — #economy05 — Where this applies
Relevant for end-to-end product proposals.
01End-to-end product development proposals
02SaaS and content platform projects
03Information architecture and complex filtering
04Startup and MVP projects
05Founders looking for a single specialist
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