Milan Bargiel

In 2020, the news website ZEIT ONLINE replaced its Drupal-based comments database with a lightweight, flexible and scalable system that stores more than 10.000 new comments a day.

As a product owner, I and my colleague Thomas Strotjohann set up an agile development process and defined the new database’s qualities in user stories.

The challenge was to exchange databases during live operations. Working in the invisible and reconnecting a service deeply intertwined within the basic functioning of the news web page was an inspiring challenge.

The comment sections of articles are an essential feature of the online news media. They allow readers to exchange ideas, engage in discussions and react to what is going on in the world. To help the professional moderators to do their job and keep comment sections a safe space, a new tool was needed.

In this project, I took the role of a product owner together with the former head of product at ZEIT ONLINE. We aimed at building a tool that provides a seamless moderation experience. By continous user testing, we were able to give shape to the tool while actually building it.