NE– Designing a digital
ecosystem for knowledge
UX · Digital Design · Art Direction
Team — In-house & Knowit IT
Role — Art Director. I led creative concepts, visual direction, content strategy, and production across Ikano Bostad's communications.
A lot of knowledge. A lot of people.
Nationalencyklopedin (NE) has evolved from a traditional printed encyclopedia into a digital knowledge company serving schools, libraries, organisations and individuals.
That means NE isn't really one digital product. It's an ecosystem. The same platform needs to work for a student researching a school assignment, a teacher preparing a lesson, a parent looking something up, or someone simply curious about a subject. Each audience comes with different needs, expectations and behaviours.
The challenge
How do you make a large and complex collection of knowledge feel simple, intuitive and inviting?
The challenge wasn't simply to make the interface look better.
It was to understand what different users were trying to accomplish and make the path to that knowledge feel as effortless as possible.
Make it useful. Make it human.
Rather than treating content as something that simply filled a social feed, we looked for stories and ideas that could genuinely add something to people's everyday lives.
That meant exploring everything from practical information and editorial content to campaigns, photography, film and social-first concepts.
The visual expression needed to feel recognisable and distinctly Ikano — but never overly corporate.
The goal was to create communication that felt human first and branded second.
From idea to execution
My role moved across the entire creative process.
I developed concepts and visual directions, worked with internal stakeholders and external creative partners, directed productions and translated ideas into content across multiple channels.
That meant moving between the big picture and the details:
Insight → Concept → Art Direction → Production → Content → Distribution
The work needed to function as a system rather than as a collection of disconnected campaigns.
The takeaway
Working with NE reinforced something I bring to every digital project:
Good UX isn't about making a complicated product look simple. It's about understanding the complexity well enough to know what the user doesn't need to see.
When the experience is working, the interface gets out of the way — and the knowledge becomes the hero.
My role
UX Design
Digital Design
Art Direction
Concept Development
Visual Design