PROTO DAILY — CASE STUDY
A news feed that shows its work — designed end to end, solo
A daily tech-news app that tunes itself in the open.
OVERVIEW
From mark
to product system.
Masthead, feed, and reader designed as one system — identity, product UI, and a working interactive prototype, all one hand.
PROBLEM
Feeds are black boxes.
News apps optimize for engagement and hide why a story appears. Readers can't see - or steer - what shapes their stream.
- Opaque rankingRecommendation feeds bury the why. There is no way to see what a story was weighted by, or to change it.
- One scroll for every modeSkimming headlines, following fields, and settling into a long read are different behaviors - forced into one endless feed.
- Identity as an afterthoughtNews products default to interchangeable UI. Nothing about the surface says why this masthead is worth trusting.
SOLUTION
A feed that shows its work.
Transparent tuning, three purpose-built surfaces, and an editorial identity carried from icon to article page.
- Tuning in the openEvery story carries the reason it reached you - weights, follows, and reading history, adjustable in place.
- Three surfaces, one systemFor You for the stream, Discover for fields, Reader for the long read - the same tokens and type across all three.
- A masthead-first identityEditorial type on bone, an olive-and-chartreuse system, and a mark that scales from app icon to article page.
THE SYSTEM
One system,
three postures.
A single set of tokens - olive ink, bone paper, one chartreuse accent, an editorial type scale - carries the masthead from the app icon to the article page. Each surface is a posture of the same system, not a new design.
THE WORK
First run to front page - splash, onboarding, and the identity at rest.
THE READER
Built for
the long read.
Serif reading view, figure plates, and type controls - the feed hands off to a quiet page that respects a 12-minute story.
KEY INSIGHTS
What the system proved.
- Transparency is a feature, not a settings page.Showing the why of the feed - in the feed - is the product's edge, not a compliance checkbox.
- Different reading modes deserve different surfaces.Splitting skim, follow, and read into three postures made each one simpler than a single feed trying to do all three.
- An editorial identity earns trust a UI kit can't.The masthead voice - type, bone paper, one accent - is what makes the product feel authored rather than assembled.
LEARNINGS & TAKEAWAYS
What ships forward.
- Design the tokens before the screens.One token set let one designer carry three surfaces without redesigning anything twice.
- Real content is the real test.Every surface is set with actual stories, timestamps, and reading times - the system had to survive live-length content, not ideal content.
- Solo means no translation loss.The same hand drew the mark, set the type, and tuned the motion - decisions stayed decisions from first sketch to final screen.
GET IN TOUCH
Same system, same hand.Let’s talk.
Open for creative technologist / design engineer / senior graphic design roles
Matthew Kenney
Designer at Podcast Monkey, USA.