INTERACTIVE TOOLS FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES — Dominika Swierad Portfolio Site

About me

I bring research, innovation and experience design together, helping teams build products that are useful, thoughtful and fun. Right now I'm part of the AI Labs team at On, where we're working to bring people more joy through movement. I've worked across sectors, with a particular passion for media and storytelling, my time at the Financial Times and building the Guardian's Feast being the highlights.

After hours I write a newsletter about metropolitan life and culture.

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INTERACTIVE TOOLS FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMESUX RESEARCH, USER TESTING, EDITORIAL RESEARCH

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I WORKED ASRESEARCH LEAD

I lead research across two major user-facing product areas: Article Experience and Storytelling Innovation, working with design, tech and editorial stakeholders on redesigning the current experience across app and web, and building innovative formats for our readers. This work included creating guidelines for editorial designers creating interactive, reader-facing components, testing visual journalism stories to ensure the best and most comprehensible experience for the readers and providing foundations for the reusable game and quiz formats.

The objective of this study was to inform the design of the Index of Multiple Deprivation, ensuring that users understand what data is being communicated to them, are able to navigate the tool, feedback meets their expectations and behaviours, and to gain confidence in the usefulness of the presented data to the readers. I led and executed the research, and worked with the editorial and design stakeholders on the implementation.

I researched and created rules for designing editorial quiz components, which are now used by the newsroom to build playful and informative game-like experiences in the news and lifestyle contexts.

I led UX research and informed the development of the FT tools with highest engagement rate of 2025 - the budget impact calculator and the fiscal drag explainer and breakdown tool. I’ve run A/B, moderated and unmoderated sessions with readers during crunch time, informing significant UX and UI changes, including copy, mobile and web UI and the information design. I’ve also gained a formal credit under the article for my contributions, which isn’t customary for researchers.

This research focused on ensuring the clarity, usability and usefulness of the component providing readers with information about their council tax, accompanying an article about council tax reform. I led UX and version testing during the development of this tool. My insights helped fine-tune the UI and the information logic, so it would match reader’s expectations.

Recommendations and specifications document that I wrote based on the audit of the current topper (the section at the top of the article, often visual) selection, competitor analysis, service design sprints with the internal users and revenue calculations of introducing potential different options. It’s been used to prioritise design and engineering work for 2026, which is now in progress.

Slide from a guide to building interactive elements that I’ve built for the editorial team, based on the extensive user research into reader’s perception of our interactive articles. It’s an evolving document and it’s being used by the editorial team on the regular basis, informing most of our data reporting.