Think.MTV - Youth Demographic Work

2007 - 2009

While at MTV Networks & Viacom, I contributed to several cross-functional projects for young fans of MTV.com, Nickelodeon, and Nick Jr.

The most impactful and compelling youth demographic project I led was the design, build, and launch of Think.MTV.com, a now-retired initiative by MTV Public Affairs. Created in response to research showing 80 percent of young people wanted to help their community and take action to support causes, but only 19 percent described themselves as “very involved.” The aim of Think.MTV was to empower our audience by building a social network with a social conscience. The primary audience was teens and young adults.

The site became a platform for MTV’s social campaigns, including Choose or Lose vote efforts, Break the Addiction Campaign to reduce oil consumption, and It’s Your (Sex) Life safe-sex initiative. Core product components included self-directed and officially sponsored Take Action Campaigns, Social Groups for Social Good tools, publishing platforms for blogging, and Street Team teen reporters across the US during the 2008 election cycle.

The product mockups and production screenshots have not aged well, and make me cringe as a designer looking back on 2007-2009, but I’m proud of the work we did here to ignite a spark of activism in our young fans and help them impact the 2008 presidential election. 

Think.MTV.com was funded by MTV Networks and generous grants from AOL founder Steve Case’s Case Foundation, Bill Gates’s Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Goldhirsh Foundation, and MCJ Foundation. At the time of our launch, partner organizations included the United Nations, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, and Clinton Global Initiative University. Celebrity partnerships included Bono, Jay Z, Brad Pitt, Petra Nemcova, Leonardo DiCaprio, Chris Rock, John Mayer, Shakira, Ryan Seacrest, John Legend, Jeff Sachs, Rosario Dawson, and Nick Cannon. 

I was a Senior Director at MTV.com at the time. My role in this project was to lead all product management, UX design, product design, creative technology engineering, and implementation of our new social platform, Flux. 

In 2009 shortly before I left MTV & NYC for California, I partnered with Dan Cederholm (my CSS hero, author, and founder of dribbble) to lead a small redesign project to update the visual style, UI design, and CSS framework of ThinkMTV. Together we produced this style guide, but it never made it to production beyond a prototype stage. I would be cringing a bit less today if these designs went live. ;)