One puzzle platform for all DPG brands

The problem I was handed

DPG Media's news brands each ran their own puzzle corner. The company wanted one platform for all of them, serving everyone from a six-year-old with a Donald Duck to a retiree with a Volkskrant subscription. Six brand organisations, editorial teams, marketing, product, and tech all had opinions. I pitched the approach to management myself and got sign-off before designing a single screen.

The problem that was actually there

Two audiences with opposite needs in one product. Free players puzzle to relax and are strongly attached to their fixed games; subscribers puzzle for challenge and often did not know how much puzzle content their subscription already included. Lead with discovery and you lose the first group; lead with the familiar and you bore the second.

What I did

Research first: 40+ interviews in three weeks, in three rounds with a synthesis after each, plus testing with more than twenty children under 14 recruited through schools and a nationwide call in the Donald Duck. The rounds produced the design's backbone: familiarity first, discovery one scroll away. The validated homefeed order became favourites, then bundles, then everything A to Z.

I designed the content model around subscription entitlements and built the white-label design system that carries it: one component library, brand icons for every DPG title, game states, premium labels, dark mode.

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The result

Concept to shipped product in nine months. The platform now serves 150,000 daily users across DPG's brands.

What this shows

The full arc: discovery, interviews, concept, design system, handover. And a structural pattern I keep coming back to: a publisher defines rights, the user only sees what applies to them, and the interface makes that feel like ownership rather than restriction.