Role: Chief Design Officer

CMSes and publishing experiences within media organizations are infamous for their frustrating user experiences. They tend to be overly cluttered, confusing interfaces that get in users' way more than they support their goals. One of the reasons for this is that the publishing system needs to support many different kinds of users — reporters, editors, designers, visual journalists, newsletter authors, and more. Each of those people has different workflows, writing processes, levels of authority, coverage areas, and cadence of work. As a result, it's very difficult to support such a variety of users without resorting to "just put another button on it".

At Axios, we believe that good reading experiences require equally compelling writing interfaces. The core principle behind Eden is one of subtraction — what can we take away while still supporting a highly complex set of requirements? The end result is a product that feels deceptively simple and elegant. The UI is designed so that there is as little interference between you and what you’re trying to write as possible. The writing experience is distinguished from the publishing and collaboration process so that the user can focus on one context at a time. And the entire experience scales elegantly to mobile devices.

User feedback:

"Eden is a goddamn joy to use."

"It was shocking how easy it was. I was like, am I doing something wrong? It can’t be this easy."

"The first few times I saw Eden, my gut instinct was 'where is all the other bloated stuff that everyone hates… this isn’t a CMS at all!'"

"The draft view that lets me see what people are working on makes me feel like a god."