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How I Helped Le Parisien Increase Its App Audience
Le Parisien had a clear opportunity: while 80% of readers consumed news on mobile, only 11% used the app. As Lead UX Designer, I was responsible for reimagining the mobile experience and redesigning the app to become the primary destination for news in France.
Meet Le Parisien: A Leading News Organization in France
Le Parisien identified low app usage as a major growth lever. I led the UX work to increase engagement and expand the active mobile audience. Working closely with journalists, stakeholders, and designers, we set out to build a modern, user-friendly news app that matched the pace, depth, and diversity of today’s news consumption.
The Product Challenge:
Le Parisien needed to turn casual mobile readers into active app users by redesigning the mobile experience to boost engagement, simplify navigation, and improve key business KPIs.
Improve Key KPIs
Increase retention and session time while keeping acquisition costs low.
Build an Engaging UI
Design a modern interface that highlights content from 400+ journalists.
Simplify Navigation
Create a navigation system that surfaces breaking news instantly while supporting deeper exploration.
Increase App Usage
Convert more of the 80% mobile readers into active app users.
The Vision: A Personal News Companion in Every Pocket
My vision was to create a modern, mobile-first news app that feels personal, fast, and easy to use. The goal was to transform Le Parisien into a daily companion — a place where readers could quickly access breaking news, explore deeper stories, and build a long-term habit of returning to the app.
My Product Design Process:
With 15+ years of experience, I work across strategy and craft. My process spans user research, interaction design, and visual design—from discovery through delivery.
The Product: UI / Visual Design
The UI design focused on creating a clean, modern interface that reflected Le Parisien’s brand while improving the reading experience. I began by shaping the structure and interactions through wireframes, then collaborated closely with a UI designer who transformed these foundations into fully branded visual components.
Key elements of the visual approach included:
- A minimalist layout that reduced visual clutter and kept the focus on content.
- Intuitive navigation patterns optimized for one-handed use on mobile.
- A modular UI kit and design system built to reflect the brand and scale as new features were added.
This design system gave Le Parisien’s team the flexibility to create new components, adapt layouts for special events, and evolve the product without compromising visual consistency.
UX Design: Crafting the User Experience
I designed the app’s structure around five pillars of modern news consumption: À la une (Top News), Rubriques (Sections), Découvrir (Discover), Personal Space, and the Newspaper Reader. After exploring several navigation models, I recommended a tab-bar system that made breaking news instantly accessible while supporting deeper exploration across the app.
We built the experience using reusable components based on atomic design principles, creating a flexible “Lego set” of UI elements tailored for different content types. These modular blocks included News Highlights, Video Player, Podcast Player, Local News, Weather, and personalized recommendations (For You).
This system allowed Le Parisien’s team to adapt content presentation dynamically — for example, highlighting special coverage during elections or major sports events.
The result was an experience that supported both quick, habitual reading and deeper engagement, giving users a clear and intuitive path through the news while giving the product team the flexibility to evolve the app over time.
Discovery: Research & Strategy
I brought together product managers, journalists, designers, and stakeholders for a series of workshops to uncover user pain points and understand the editorial team’s needs. These sessions helped align the product vision and define clear priorities for the redesign.
To validate our decisions, I led multiple prototype iterations and conducted user testing sessions focused on navigation, content hierarchy, and reading flows. This iterative approach allowed us to refine the mobile-first experience and ensure it met both user expectations and editorial requirements.
The insights from research shaped the direction of the app, helping us build an experience that felt intuitive for long-time readers while remaining accessible to new users discovering Le Parisien through mobile.
The Showcase:
The redesigned Le Parisien app delivered a modern, mobile-first news experience, giving readers faster access to breaking news, richer storytelling formats, and a more intuitive way to explore daily content.
The Results:
The redesigned Le Parisien app had an immediate impact, increasing app adoption, boosting engagement, and improving key KPIs.
Increased User Adoption
App usage increased from 11% to 19% within the first 3 months.
App Store Ranking
Consistently ranked among the top 3 apps in the News category.
User Satisfaction
Achieved a 4.3/5 rating with more than 70,000 monthly downloads.
Session Length
Average session duration increased from 1 minute to 5 minutes.
Transform Ideas Into Great Products
With 15+ years of experience, I help companies design and build digital products that deliver results. Ready to start your next project?