Internal Tooling and Platform Redesign

REI’s Expert Advice (EA) website supports a high-traffic library of outdoor content. As part of an internal platform migration, I collaborated with dev and product partners to expand an internal publishing tool and digital design system to include EA, ensuring both internal teams and end users had more intuitive, scalable experiences.

my role – UX/UI design, user research, front-end development, art direction

my focus – internal tooling, design systems, editorial content design

the team – devs, writers, editors, visual designers

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a new platform

To support future growth and improve workflow efficiency, REI implemented a new publishing platform, Hippo, for the company’s e-commerce unit. In partnership with engineers and program partners, I worked as the design lead in expanding Hippo to include Expert Advice (EA) content and experiences. This effort required understanding the needs of both internal contributor roles and our end-users.

designing for internal users

EA contributors included writers, editors, customer support staff, program managers, and designers, each with different jobs to do and levels of technical fluency. I engaged with the team to better understand contributor workflows, pain points, and wishlists with their legacy publishing tool. I then worked with Hippo stakeholders to define platform requirements that would: 

  • Improve workflow usability
  • Reduce publishing errors
  • Enable seamless review cycles with different contributors
  • Integrate SEO and accessibility improvements
  • Speed up time to publication

Following the discovery and definition phases, I supported rapid prototyping, content migration, and QA directly within Hippo, and used feedback from internal contributors to guide refinements to layout and hierarchy.

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designing for end-users

Expanding EA into Hippo allowed us to integrate with REI’s Digital Design System, Cedar, for the first time. Cedar was developed with an e-commerce focus first, so I creatively worked to adapt existing components and introduce new ones tailored to editorial needs. These updates not only improved visual hierarchy and consistency for EA pages, but also helped shape future patterns across .com touchpoints.

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tech to support rich content

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Over the years, the EA content library began to expand into more technical content, such as wilderness first aid, navigation, and moutaineering. Given the complexities of the subject matter, we began relying heavily on video and other rich-media to deliver content that was safe, accurate, and helpful to users, but page performance became a blocker.

During REI’s Innovation Days, I led a multi-disciplinary group in developing a new video feature that would result in a 75% improvement of page load performance on our test page. This unlocked a new class of interactive, media-rich content that was previously too resource-heavy to deliver.

results and impact

  • Internal contributors gained a more efficient, intuitive publishing experience with fewer errors and clearer workflows
  • EA content now leverages modern design system components, resulting in improved layout, hierarchy, and consistency with the broader brand
  • New platform capabilities enabled a richer, more dynamic content experience for readers
  • The EA library now includes over 600 pages, including some of the most visited and highest-ranking content on REI.com