Designing the future of the work newsfeed

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

As human beings, our lives are shaped by the collection of experiences we live and the people we know.

One of the ways we broaden what we learn from others is by reading. Reading shapes what we know, who we are, how we see, and how we think. Reading is our silent teacher and mentor. It parents us. It’s on our team when we are are alone. It builds our character. It grows our person and intellect, around life and our life’s work. It is an age-old tradition that has transformed societies, started revolutions, and raised world changers. Reading empowers us to be more and to do more.

This is why at feedly we believe that reading is so powerful, especially when it comes to our professional lives. Magic moments manifest when people connect to new ideas through reading — which becomes the fodder for new ideas, innovations, and paradigm shifts. With the explosion of great content all over the web, this type of transformation through reading will only continue to accelerate and help us get better and better at what we do. In this sense, reading is more powerful than ever.

So we’ve dedicated ourselves to facilitating the productive, seamless integration of ideas, knowledge, and creativity, full of magic moments.

With feedly, we are building the “work newsfeed” — the most personalized way for the content you rely on to come to you, so that you can read important stories efficiently and deeply collaborate with other people on the web’s best ideas and inspiration. This more productive reading experience provides people a way to deeply personalize the news that they rely on. When reading on the web is truly personalized, it empowers people to get better at what they do and then put that content to work through a multitude of integrations with other services.

The open web is the best place to see content grow and it is made rich by the creators who contribute to it. So we also build tools that help publishers — small boutique bloggers and news giants alike — nurture and thrill their loyal readers.

But what does it mean to design for people looking for a modern reading experience? One that makes today’s content renaissance on the web clear and accessible and one that works across platforms and screens. In this mode of work, we face some specific challenges:

How do you create a truly personalized experience?

The web is a vast place, exploding with rich content. These experiences on the web really become powerful when they are personalized to us, especially when it comes to getting better at our jobs. This is why our goal at feedly is to create the most personalized news reading experience for the content that is important to us.

This “work newsfeed”—as we like to call it—should not only be filled with rich, high-definition information, free from distractions and noise. It should also allow us to be in the driver’s seat—to fully control what we read and how we want to read it.

With the boom of great content on the web, the ability to control, personalize, and organize that experience is more important than ever, but no product has really delivered it.

We have specific sources we want to read from—we like and trust some more than others—and we can’t merely trust any random algorithm to throw at us a bunch of stories related to our interest. We are more granular. We are more specific. We are more opinionated.

Over the past few years feedly has become a place where you can follow close to any source of content on the web, whether it’s a well-known publisher, a blogger, a YouTube channel, or Google search alerts. As part of the feedly experience, we have also created algorithms that suggest to people great related stories and publications you might like.

But there is so much more we could do. We could supercharge our suggestions and allow even more personalization. We could enhance how we rank the most important stories. We could create new, useful ways to let people define even better what they are trying to achieve with their reading.

How do you design the future of collaboration?

Steve Jobs once said that, “Creativity is about connecting the dots.” We think that reading is about generating these dots.

The most successful people are those who use the stories, insights, and new ideas they discover as inspiration to spark conversation and create something new.

This is why we are building feedly as the news feed with richest personalization tools and the strongest integrations with other web sources, so that you can put content to work. Reading is powerful, and it should be easily streamlined with everything we do — whether it’s saving stories for future reference, sending them to your team or manager, collaborating on the same key internet searches, empowering employees with the right stories, or leading the inspiring others through content.

Today feedly is connected to hundreds of popular services, including Evernote, Dropbox, Buffer, and IFTTT—and we consider this just the beginning. Creating an awesome collaboration experience is core to our roadmap because we believe the future is all about working together and working in teams, and we are excited to take part into shaping this future.

How do you optimize the content experience for all participants?

The popular phrase is true: Content is king.

As online engagement with quality content has soared, brands are becoming publishers, and publishers are becoming brands.

As a reading platform, feedly is in the center of this global trend. It is the watering hole where people come for focused web reading and where publishers can find tools to grow and nurture their most loyal followers.

At feedly we want to support the open web as a thriving ecosystem in which the reader and the publishers are meeting their deepest needs.

How do you use typography, color, and spacing as an ally in creating the best reading experience in the world? How do you balance the need for a focused, uncluttered interface while also presenting publishers, boutique bloggers, and the feedly brand in a beautiful way? We want to help everyone thrive.

So, join us!

There is a lot that we’ve done. But there is still so much more to be done.

We are looking for a product designer who expresses her/his design thinking into clean and efficient visual design (check out the job description here). Please get in touch with design@feedly.com if you’re interested. Attach your portfolio, what excites you about working at feedly, and what challenges you like to work on.

We are looking forward to making feedly even better and better every day.

– Arthur Bodolec, feedly designer/co-founder