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.
The tools weren't hidden. They were written up for engineers, in release notes 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: a first concept, a change of direction after discovery, then 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. Accurate, and unreadable to the business.
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 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. One feature, one benefit, one tap 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: short, image-led cards that 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.
One headline and one 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 one 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.
Front door
Every newsletter story teases an article in the hub, so the two were designed as one system: same headline, same imagery, same 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 one 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: a melted-cheese drip on the navigation, sesame seeds behind the roadmap, 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 didn't ship. Short, image-led cards that explain what something does before how it works did.
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.
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Case study →Enterprise 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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