Work

Leadership at scale, with the craft to back it up.

Two decades of work across publishing and adtech: platforms rebuilt, revenue grown, teams scaled, and products designed hands-on. These are the projects that show how I lead.

Selected leadership work
Newsday on desktop, tablet, and phone
Newsday · Platform
Newsday Redesign
78%
faster page loads, with ad viewability up from 15% to nearly 70%
Read the case study →
Email icons floating above a laptop keyboard
Newsday · Growth
200%+ Subscriptions
200%+
growth in digital subscription revenue over two years, plus a checkout redesign that lifted completions 22.4%
Read the case study →
MNTN · 0→1 product
MNTN Project
0→1
A product I led from concept through launch, with its own design system. Private case study.
Request access →
Aa
MNTN · Design systems
Everest Design System
1st
project at MNTN: a release system and component approval for an established design system
Read the case study →
A whiteboard showing the UX workflow
MNTN · Team and process
Product Design Workflow
Design-led
A unified design process for an engineering-driven product culture
Read the project →
The new MNTN welcome screen on a laptop
MNTN · AI
AI-Assisted Onboarding
15%
onboarding completion I set out to fix, using AI only where it added clear value
Read the project →
Range of experience

From the boardroom to the browser.

The work spans leading organizations and writing the CSS. Pick a capability to see where it shows up.

Leading teams and process

Scaling teams, running governance, and building the habits that let design ship.

Design systems

Component libraries and the governance behind them. Three built over my career.

Growth and revenue

Tying design decisions to subscriptions, ad revenue, and conversion.

Data and product tools

Dashboards, monitoring, and research-led product design.

0→1 and concept creation

Turning a sentence or two of explanation into a concept, then a working product.

Hands-on build

Figma prototypes, custom CSS and JavaScript, Laravel backends, and hand-coded sites.

Storytelling and brand

Journalism with real-world impact, identities, and visual storytelling.

Newsday · 2008–2022

Fourteen years, from award-winning interactives to a rebuilt platform.

As UX & Design Director, I led a 20+ person team of designers, engineers, and QA. The work ran the full range: journalism with real-world impact, a platform redesign, subscription growth, and the systems and habits that let the team keep doing it.

A phone showing the Long Island Divided investigation
01 · Journalism with impact
Long Island Divided

My team worked for three years with every part of the organization to present a landmark investigation into discrimination by real estate agents. It won the George Polk Award and led to new legislation and a major response from real estate companies and politicians.

See the Newsday interactives →
Newsday on desktop, tablet, and phone
02 · A platform rebuilt
Newsday Redesign

In a single year we rebuilt the entire site and introduced a new CMS: 78% faster page loads, ad viewability up from 15% to nearly 70%, and 24% more ad revenue year over year.

Read the case study →
Email icons floating above a laptop keyboard
03 · Revenue growth
200%+ Subscriptions

Converting readers who expect free news into paying subscribers: homepage banners, better-timed paywalls, refined content gating, and tiered offers took digital subscription revenue up more than 200% over two years.

Read the case study →
04 · A team that could keep doing it
Systems, habits, and craft

A design system with governance cut design-to-development time by 62%. Shared agile rituals cut delivery time by 32%. Building design capability in-house reduced outsourcing costs by 56%, and the team won four New York Emmy Awards for interactive design.

How I led design there
Set the vision and the KPIs

I defined product vision and KPIs with editorial, product, and revenue leads, so the team worked toward the same measurable goals.

Make decisions with data

I built a data-driven design culture and embedded UX metrics into product planning, so evidence shaped every release.

Build systems that scale

I led the Newsday Design System, a component library with visual, interaction, and accessibility standards and clear governance.

Put design and engineering in rhythm

I moved both teams onto shared sprint rituals, design reviews, and rapid iteration cycles.

Still in the files

I'd never tell someone how to do something I couldn't do myself.

I lead by example, so I stay hands-on in Figma and with AI tools. Where I haven't done something before, I say so and I learn it.

See the craft up close →
Figma
From concept to working proof of concept

On an unreleased MNTN product, I designed the concepts and built the design system myself, then led the front-end design to a working proof of concept within three months.

Request the private case study →
The new MNTN welcome screen on a laptop
AI tools
AI where it adds clear value

In AI-Assisted Onboarding, only 15% of users finished onboarding. I moved billing to a higher-intent moment and used AI to collect site and company details automatically, so users did less work and trust stayed intact.

Read the project →
How I use AI →
The Creative Group screen from the Unified Creative project
Always learning
New to adtech, then leading it

When I joined MNTN I was new to adtech. I learned the space quickly, took on its design system first, and built the product design workflow for an engineering-driven culture.

The Minimonies story on a phone
Code
I build what I design

At Newsday I built interactives with custom CSS, JavaScript, and Laravel backends, and designed the WordPress-based system the newsroom’s storytelling ran on for six years. For small clients I ship lightweight, pure-HTML sites.

See the Newsday interactives →
More work

The rest of the portfolio.

Newsday · 7 projects
Newsday interactives

Long Island Divided, Open Spaces, Minimonies, Haunted Long Island, About Newsday, Baby Names, and Restaurant Inspections.

Browse →
MNTN · 3 projects
MNTN product design

Reporting Concepts, the Performance Operations Center, and Unified Creative.

Browse →
Freelance and personal · 7 projects
Beyond the day job

Hand-coded sites, a data report, logos, and one very popular blog logo.

Browse →
Want the private case studies?

Some of my current work isn't public yet. Ask and I'll share it.

Request access
© Matthew Cassella · Northport, NY
LinkedIn