Enhancing author experience through a new interface for their published work
Overview
Emerald Insight is a publishing platform for academic research hosting journals, books, and case studies. Despite being the home of Emerald's content, authors had no reliable way to access their own published work. Users relied on emailed links and there were expensive internal workarounds. These workarounds created frustration for authors, reputational risk, and did not meet contractual obligations. Over a 12-week period, I led the end to end design process for a new Authored Works interface, giving authors a dedicated space to find and view their work, without needing Support to intervene.
Role
UX Designer
Product Manager, Product Owner Support, Business Owner, 2 x Developers
12 weeks
The problem
The core issue was that authors couldn't access their own work. This frustration generated more than 160 support tickets a month and forced internal teams to manually send 70-80 PDFs every month. These workarounds were time-consuming, costly and left Emerald at risk of breaching contracts, or losing authors to competitors due to poor experience and reputational damage.
Results
The new Authored Works interface significantly improved both author experience and internal efficiency. Unexpected features made sharing research easier, promoting not only author's work but Emerald content too.
Reducing the need for manual PDF sending and associated workaround costs (~£50k annually)
Achieved an 86% reduction in support tickets related to author access.
Delivered persistent, self-service access to authored works across journals, books, and cases.
costs saved annually
reduction in suport tickets
Understanding the problem and current workarounds
I kicked off the project with a discovery meeting involving key stakeholders from Editorial, Support, and Product. We mapped the current workarounds for giving authors access alongside the requirements and contractual obligations. From this, we aligned on:
Who our users are: authors across journals, books, cases, including single-chapter contributors and full-book authors.
Business goals: reduce costs, meet obligations, and strengthen author loyalty.
User goals: persistent access, clarity between authored and purchased content, and visibility into tokens.
Current Problems: high support burden, costly manual processes, reputational risk, and user frustration.
The workarounds for providing access used the existing profile structure but mixed authored and purchased items together. Reviewing the existing profile interface it became clear that access wasn’t the only pain point. There were wider issues around the indication of token usage, expiry, or how tokens can be used to purchase content. These problems weren't part of the initial scope, but addressing them became essential for a clearer experience.
Existing profile interface (workarounds appear here)
Exploring solutions
Because Emerald’s catalogue spans so many content types, we needed an approach that was flexible enough to work across journals, books, chapters, and cases. It also needed to be scalable for future developments for editors and reviewers, although the focus was on author experience. I developed wireframes exploring different layouts and grouping methods, and held feedback sessions with internal stakeholders to understand feasibility and constraints.
A key challenge was balancing stakeholder input (sometimes conflicting) with user needs, while also questioning underlying assumptions. Through several iteration rounds, we narrowed down to two different approaches to test with real users to determine which solution worked better.
Solution 1: Organised content by parent content name
(e.g Book name > Chapter name, or Journal name > article name)
Solution 2: Organised content by individual content name
(e.g Chapter name > Book name, or Article name > Journal name)
Proving assumptions wrong and uncovering hidden needs
I created interactive prototypes in Figma for both solutions and asked authors to complete the same set of tasks in both versions. The goal for this testing was to reveal which version they found easiest to access their content (PDF file link).
These sessions validated the core direction but also surfaced a hidden need: authors wanted a fast way to export citations for their publications. The primary reason authors wanted to access their work was to use it in teaching, research, and funding applications, to do this they used the citation details. I pushed to include a feature to bulk download citations, but this was outside the original scope.
There was pushback from stakeholders due to technical scope and concerns about tech debt, however it was essential to how authors would be interacting with our platform. I had to advocate strongly for the user ensuring we were not just delivering a functional solution but one that truly solved the right problem. As a compromise, I refined the designs to allow users to download individual publication citation details, preserving key user needs while aligning with development feasibility.
Solution: Authors had access their to work with unexpected features
The final interface gives authors a clear, dedicated space to view their publication across all content types. The addition of the citation download feature means authors can share or promote their work with ease, increasing engagement for not only their own research, but Emerald content too. The dropdown button also allows for additional format options in the future (Harvard or RIS, BibTex etc). Alt-metrics are available per publication too, so authors can track engagement directly from the platform.
Authored items are also separated from purchased content, resolving the confusion we saw in the original profile structure. Token balances and expiry details are now visible, so authors can easily understand how their access works.
Better author experience and less burden on support
After launch, access-related support tickets dropped by 86% (over 12 months), and the manual PDF-sending workflow was removed entirely, saving more than £50k annually. Authors now have a reliable tool to view and promote their research.
What I would do differetly
Looking back, there are a few ways I would approach this project differently today.
Involve authors earlier in the discovery phase. While stakeholder workshops helped uncover previous user research insights and business pain points, direct user involvement earlier on could have surfaced the hidden primary need sooner, reducing rework later.
Prototype higher-fidelity flows sooner. Starting with quick wireframes was useful for alignment, but a more realistic prototype earlier could have given stakeholders and authors a clearer sense of the experience and helped reduce some of the back-and-forth.
Finally, I would push for a clearer prioritisation framework with stakeholders. Balancing multiple content types and business needs was complex, and having a stronger shared understanding of “must-haves” vs. “nice-to-haves” earlier would have smoothed decision-making and reduced friction when scope questions came up.
Overall, the project was successful, but these learnings have shaped how I now approach discovery, prototyping, and stakeholder alignment on complex problems.