A members-only hub inside McDonald's intranet that turns technical release notes into stories franchise owners read. Lead product designer, shipped on Unily.
The short version
Franchise owners were paying outside vendors for technology McDonald's already had.
They were documented in release notes written for engineers, which no business owner could read. The brief was to show these people what already exists, in a way a non-technical reader can digest.
I led the product design, from a first concept and a change of direction after discovery to the hub that shipped inside McDonald's own intranet.
McDonald's global engineering team ships a constant stream of restaurant technology: POS releases, drive-thru tools, kiosk updates and supply chain systems.
Almost all of it was documented for engineers. The people who decide what goes into a restaurant are franchise owners and partners, and in release notes full of version numbers and acronyms they couldn't tell whether a tool was something they could use.
Version numbers, acronyms and changelogs, all accurate and hard for a business reader to follow.
Franchise owners, stakeholders and partners. Business people deciding what to buy.
Some went to outside vendors for problems McDonald's had already solved.
The first concept came from the brief alone. Stakeholder interviews showed a different product.
First concept
I went to where these people already spend their attention, Instagram and Facebook stories. Story circles by category (POS, Supply Chain, Drive-Thru Tech), each opening into short, swipeable slides. Each slide was a feature and its benefit, with a tap through to the full story.
That changed the job. I was now designing a system that had to fit a CMS and a header that already existed, and still feel like its own product. The stories were parked. Their principle carried through. The cards stay short and image-led, and say what something does before they say how it works.
Most people would never type the URL. They'd arrive from the newsletter, sign in and land on one story, so the flow was designed backwards from that moment.
A single headline and link per story.
Their existing McDonald's account.
What's new, what changed, where to go next.
POS, RFM, RTP, Drive-Thru, Supply Chain, or filter by type.
A plain-language story, with release notes a click away.
Design decisions
Each one answers the same question for a franchise owner: is this for me, and is it ready?
Navigation
The top header had to stay Unily's: the @mcd logo, Sites, Documents, Directory, search and profile. Fighting it would have broken the intranet everyone knew. So the hub got its own sub-menu underneath, with its own logo and navigation. One header says where you are in McDonald's. The second says where you are in the hub.
Entry point
Every newsletter story teases an article in the hub, so the two were designed as one system, with the same headline, imagery and cards. The article you land on looks like the thing you just read about, with tags, author, date, a video hero and the full release notes a click away.
Category hubs
Each category became a hub: new features, fixes, future features, releases by version and a roadmap. The roadmap matters most. A franchise owner can see what a team is building and when it lands, and decide to wait for it instead of buying elsewhere.
Findability
The Resource Library groups everything by month and filters by type: Newsletter, Articles, Playbook, Video, Guides. Every card carries the same two tags, category and format, so you know what you're opening. Search covers the whole hub, with list and grid views and filters by site.
Official artwork only, applied in new ways, and a small set of parts that editors can publish with after launch.
Brand system
I read McDonald's brand portal and design system end to end. The playful parts came straight from it, like a melted-cheese drip on the navigation, sesame seeds behind the roadmap and fries on the login. The melted-cheese nav was the detail the client loved most.
CMS-ready
After launch, content authors keep publishing without a designer in the room. Every page is assembled from the same parts: story cards with tags, a hero card, release accordions, filter pills and stat cards. If an editor can fill the fields, the page looks right.
The stories concept first, then the hub as it shipped.
Shipped
On Unily, inside the @mcd intranet
It runs on the platform, login and header McDonald's teams already use, built from templates and card patterns the developers could assemble and editors keep publishing into.
What I learned
Big organisations rarely need their platform torn down. They need design that fits the CMS and the brand they already have, and still makes people want to open it.
The stories were parked. Their idea lives on in cards that are short, image-led and explain what something does before how it works.
With the brand guide and design system in hand, we went straight to high-fidelity design. Wireframes would have decided nothing new.
The first idea is a bet on the brief. Discovery tells you what the product is. My job was to let go of the stories and keep what they were for.
Fintech, 2022
A mobile wallet for Pakistan, mapped end to end before the first release was cut. PayFast built it and launched it on iOS and Android.
Read the case studyEdTech, 2020-2022
Another platform with many kinds of user: a school's admin, teachers, students and parents, designed module by module.
Read the case studyEnterprise platform, intranet or a brand-heavy product with a CMS to respect? Send me the brief, and I'll tell you where discovery should start.
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