Overview
BackgroundIn 2023, The Atlantic launched group subscriptions to provide institutions like universities and high schools with seamless, institution-wide digital access for the first time.
Timeline: Q4 2023 - Q1 2024
Role: Design Lead;UX Strategy
The GoalBuild out a digital group subscription experience for multi-seat academic audiences, while cultivating a younger generation of readers.
Research
1.
Librarians wanted simple SSO-based access that didn’t require managing user lists.
2.
For years, students and faculty accessed The Atlantic through third-party research aggregators like EBSCO. While these platforms offered institutional access, the experience was fragmented: outdated interfaces, minimal functionality, and no direct link to The Atlantic’s full digital offering. Similarly, libraries that subscribed to publications like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal encountered hurdles like confusing login processes and a limited access to the publisher’s native features.
We saw an opportunity to offer something unique: a direct, streamlined experience that gives users full access to TheAtlantic.com and its subscriber benefits, while simplifying onboarding and management for librarians.
Interviews with students and faculty uncovered three consistent themes:
Students need a straightforward, paywall-free experience that minimizes the risk for non-completion
3.
Institutions cared deeply about student privacy, and are not sharing personal data.
Design
To meet the needs of both students and institutions, I focused on delivering a seamless login flow and a privacy-conscious onboarding experience that could still foster user engagement.
To start, I created detailed user flows for two primary access paths: one where students arrived directly at TheAtlantic.com and located their institution via a dedicated login page, and another where users navigated through their school's internal portal or library system. Designing for both entry points ensured we captured the wide variety of access behaviors across institutions and created a consistent experience regardless of where the journey began.
We built on OpenAthens, a login provider widely used in the academic space, to authenticate users through institutional email domains. This allowed users to access content without creating a separate account, while ensuring compliance with institutional privacy standards.
The access experience started with a custom institutional login page. Users could select their school, authenticate via their university, and be returned to TheAtlantic.com with full access—no paywalls, no registration friction.
To orient group subscribers and and collect important user data, I designed a lightweight onboarding flow:
A combined prompt to identify their role and subscribe to newsletters and notifications.
Nudges that introduced key product features like newsletters, saved stories, and The Archive.
This approach avoided collecting personal data upfront, instead inviting users to engage on their terms. We also designed the flow to introduce key product features like newsletters, saved stories, and The Archive, helping students quickly understand how to get value from their access.