SuperToast Media
As Senior UX/UI Designer at SuperToast Media (Portuguese media company under Instinct), I led the complete design and development of a cross-platform news consumption app for Apple TV, Watch, iPhone, and iPad. I created a comprehensive design system and transformed traditional business news into engaging, TikTok-style visual experiences, achieving seamless multi-device integration and establishing a new standard for professional media consumption.
01
Challenge & Opportunity
SuperToast Media needed to differentiate itself in the competitive Portuguese business news market while engaging mobile-first audiences. The challenge was creating a cohesive experience across Apple's entire ecosystem that could transform traditional articles into visually compelling content while maintaining journalistic credibility.
The core objectives were designing a unified experience across 4 Apple platforms, transforming text-heavy articles into engaging visual content, creating TikTok-style engagement for business news, building a scalable design system for rapid content production, and integrating community features without disrupting the core experience.
02
Design System & UI Innovation
I developed a comprehensive design system with over 200 components specifically optimized for Apple's ecosystem. The system featured adaptive layouts that scaled seamlessly across iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Watch, with consistent typography hierarchy optimized for each device's viewing distance. I created a custom iconography library with platform-specific variations and established a sophisticated color system supporting both light and dark modes with full accessibility compliance.
The cross-platform UI architecture leveraged each device's unique capabilities. The iPhone version prioritized mobile-first design with thumb-friendly navigation and gesture-based interactions. iPad featured enhanced layouts with multi-column reading and expanded data visualizations. Apple TV offered large-format interfaces optimized for living room viewing, while Apple Watch focused on glanceable information design with haptic feedback integration.
Rather than simple content aggregation, I designed a visual content transformation pipeline that rebuilds articles with SuperToast's distinctive visual identity. This included custom graphic templates for automatic article enhancement, specialized data visualization components for complex business information, and a branded storytelling framework that maintained editorial integrity while creating visual consistency.
03
Key Features & Solutions
The app centered around four core sections that defined the user experience. The Feed served as the homepage, featuring article discovery with custom visual treatments and intelligent curation tailored to the Portuguese business landscape. The Play section introduced a TikTok-inspired vertical video feed optimized specifically for business content, featuring smooth gesture navigation and algorithmic content discovery that maintained professional standards.
My Toast provided a personalized dashboard with pre-selected themes covering GAFAM, New Economy, and Startups, along with cross-device reading progress synchronization. The Graphics section showcased custom data visualizations and infographics that presented complex business analytics in accessible, visually engaging formats. The Profile section integrated community features with WhatsApp connectivity, theme preferences for dark and light modes, and personalized notification scheduling.
The technical UI innovations included seamless device handoff using Apple's Continuity framework, performance-optimized infinite scroll capable of handling complex graphics, native WhatsApp integration that maintained app ecosystem integrity, and adaptive content layouts that responded intelligently to device orientation and usage context.
04
Results & Impact
The design system delivered exceptional efficiency gains, reducing development time by 50% through the reusable component library while ensuring consistent brand experience across all four platforms. User adoption metrics exceeded expectations with 89% retention rate in the first week post-launch and 73% of users actively engaging across multiple devices, demonstrating the success of the cross-platform approach.
The UI and UX performance metrics validated the design decisions, with users spending 40% more time in the app compared to competitor applications. The vertical video content achieved an impressive 85% completion rate, while 91% of users adopted the personalization features. Most significantly, the visual content enhancements increased article engagement by 120%, proving the effectiveness of transforming traditional text-based news into visual experiences.
From a business perspective, the app established SuperToast as an innovation leader in the Portuguese media market. The scalable design foundation created opportunities for future product expansion while building a sustainable competitive advantage through superior user experience that competitors struggled to match.
