Posted MN

Redesigning for a contributor-first publishing platform

Web Design

Media & Publishing

Client

Unread Media

Duration

2 months

Year

2019

Industry

Media & Publishing

Team

Creative Director, Senior Product Designer,

Role

Product Designer

Posted.mn set out to be Mongolia’s answer to Medium, a place where writers publish on anything and build communities around ideas. At launch, it did not feel new. It reused the familiar structure of the company’s flagship publication site, so first-time visitors often read it as more of the same.

I helped redesign Posted so the difference was clear fast, with publication-led discovery, writer-forward article pages, and cleaner reading and interaction patterns for sharing and commenting.

What was broken (and why it mattered)

Posted’s strategy and its interface contradicted each other.

  • Strategy: many publications, many writers, uneven posting cadence, diverse topics

  • Reality: a layout designed for a single daily feature, where discovery lived behind a menu and early sections dominated attention

The result: users couldn’t immediately understand what Posted was, why it existed, or how to explore.

What we believed (principles)

  1. Identity should be legible in the first 10 seconds
    If users can’t tell what makes Posted different, they won’t invest attention.

  2. Writers are the product
    If this is a contributor platform, authorship can’t be a footnote.

  3. Discovery must scale with volume
    A homepage that works for 7 posts/week collapses under daily publishing.

  4. Community loops beat “features”
    Comments, sharing, and subscriptions should feel lightweight, not punished by hurdles.

Key decisions

1) Reframe “categories” as publications

We clarified the mental model: publications aren’t tags—they’re mini-magazines. That meant designing publication surfaces that feel like destinations, not filters, and giving them identity beyond a list of posts.

2) Make the homepage a map, not a dump

Instead of endless horizontal sections that favor whatever sits first, the homepage needed to answer:

  • What’s new right now?

  • What are the main publications?

  • Where do I go if I’m here for a topic—or a writer?

3) Treat writer visibility as a credibility system

We redesigned article pages so author identity is obvious, readable, and clickable—because on a platform like this, trust and return visits are attached to people.

4) Fix readability with real hierarchy

We improved scanning: headings that behave like headings, quotes that look like quotes, links that look like links. The goal: make long-form feel effortless and short-form feel intentional.

5) Remove friction where community should be easy

We targeted obvious blockers:

  • the 100-character comment minimum (discourages natural interaction)

  • share actions that were visually too quiet

  • ad placements that blended into content and broke trust

What I delivered (solution highlights)

Outcome

The redesign aligned Posted’s interface with its core promise: a scalable ecosystem of publications and contributors. The work was approved and handed off, but the build was not shipped.

What I’d measure next (if shipped)

  • Publication discovery: visits and subscriptions/follows

  • Writer pathway: author profile visits, return sessions by author

  • Exploration: sessions with 2+ articles, recommended CTR

  • Community health: comment rate (without spam), share rate

  • Trust: ad misclick rate / bounce after ad exposure