World Economic Forum — One Digital Forum
Lead Product Designer
Background
The World Economic Forum’s digital ecosystem spans multiple platforms, products and tools. Over time, these had evolved in silos — each with its own strategy, visual identity, navigation model and taxonomy.
This fragmentation created inconsistencies in both design and user experience, making it harder for users to move seamlessly across the digital estate.
Working closely with Forum stakeholders, I set out to create a more unified and coherent experience.
Disciplines
Brand strategy
User Experience
Visual Design
Prototyping
User Testing
Website
To bring consistency across the ecosystem, I established the Forum’s first global design system. Following initial workshops to map components and explore layouts, typography and spacing, I created a scalable system that standardised core UI patterns — improving consistency across platforms and enabling better collaboration between design, engineering and product teams.
1. Creating a global design system
As new products emerged, the system evolved into a robust library of 27 production-ready components used across seven teams. Built on theme-able, scalable design tokens, it improved both design and development efficiency, while raising the overall quality of the Forum’s digital products.
Design system workshop.
Global design system foundation and components.
Public website local component library.
My audit of the digital estate revealed inconsistent language and fragmented user journeys, particularly across membership flows.
In response, I defined a new vision centred on simplifying access and improving the overall experience for all user types. This included redesigned sign-up and sign-in flows, a new onboarding experience, and the introduction of a centralised account hub — forming the foundation for several new projects.
2. Improved membership journeys
Working closely with the SSO engineering team, we implemented a unified authentication experience across all platforms, enabling seamless account creation via email and social sign-in, and introducing a single, consistent sign-in across the ecosystem.
The account hub I designed brought everything into one place, giving members greater control over their details, preferences and membership plans.
Sign-up, sign-in, account management and sign-out problem statements.
New sign-up and sign-in flows and designs.
New centralised account hub.
To improve content discovery on the public site, I redesigned the global navigation with a more streamlined and user-focused approach. This included a reduced-height header to prioritise content within the viewport, and a new dropdown menu organised around topics rather than structure. This shift made it easier for users to explore the breadth of the Forum’s work and discover content aligned with their interests.
3. Updated global navigation
Supporting the new menu, I also designed a set of topic landing pages showcasing how the Forum advances work across different subjects.
The authenticated user menu was also refined and the global footer simplified, creating a more consistent and cohesive navigation experience end to end.
Updated global navigation prototype.
“Malin spent over four years with us on one of our most important accounts. She set the visual bar for our front-end work and built our design QA process from the ground up. These are standards we still work to from a design QA perspective, and they've had a lasting impact on the visual quality of our front-end production code. The range was what made her so effective: she was as comfortable in a room with editorial and business stakeholders as she was deep in the detail with developers. And on top of all that, she was simply a great person to have around. Calm, collaborative, and easy to work with. Anyone would be lucky to have her.”
— Tom Clayton, Director of Product, Made by Many
“Malin, thank you so much for everything — it was an absolute blast to have you on board! You are a true One Digital Forum star.”
— Cosima Piepenbrock, Head of Product, Intelligence and User Experience, World Economic Forum