Partner with innovation experts and world-class professionals to co-create, develop and launch new products.

The Digital Product Launch is a 10-week module of Google News Initiative’s Design Accelerator program. It’s a collaborative program that uses a user-centred approach to focus on developing, testing and launching digital news and media products in this era of unprecedented change across the news industry.

Our facilitators will work alongside your teams to gather customer insights and move news and media product ideas from concept to market in record time.

Dive into the details!

10-week program

The Google News Initiative Digital Product Launch is a 10-week program, designed to help you and your team launch the most desirable and valuable media product possible for your audience.

During the program you’ll receive a combination of remote learning and project facilitation based on a user-centred design approach to creating a digital news and media product.

You will not only learn how best to define, create and ship an amazing digital media product, but will receive hands-on assistance and guidance throughout the process to help you bring your vision to life.

This program is not simply theory. It's a living project that is ideal for news and media product teams who wish to discover practical tools and methods for every stage of the product development lifecycle. It's an ideal way for team champions to become better design leaders and media product teams to maximise their skills with more efficiency.

What will be required of you for this program:

This program is designed for the team who participated in the design sprint and that will continue on the project to implement the developed solution. Phase 2 of the Google News Initiative Design Accelerator requires a minimum commitment of 12 hours per week from each participating team member and 15 hours per week from the product lead. We're launching a new product, it's not easy!

Each team should be cross-functional to help realise the product outcome. It’s important to ensure you have a range of skill sets represented within your team, such as the following:

-   Ability to design a product’s usability and functionality.
-   Capability to build a digital prototype through a variety of code languages.
-   Capability to bring the product vision to life in a visually captivating way.
-   Ability to lead the initiative and act as the product’s CEO.
-   Capability to determine market fit strategies and any partnerships required.

What you'll achieve through the Digital Product Launch (phase 2 of the GNI DA)

Through this program, you will be guided and assisted through each step of the digital media product development and launch process.

Our designers will not only teach you theory, but will assist in both guiding your team as well as practically developing your digital media solution alongside you.

At the end of the 10 week program you will have a fully functional and ready to launch digital media product, as well as a stronger knowledge of how to replicate this process in the future. 

With the Digital Product Launch we're also testing a new working system to make your team work faster and effectively while working remotely. 

What's involved in this program

The Digital Product Launch Accelerator contains four key components:

1. Pre-recorded video lessons

Explaining the theory behind the topic.


2. Activities

Related to each topic for you to put into practice with your team.


3. Online facilitation

With our trainers for added guidance and practical assistance.


4. Tips

From industry experts and high profile product designers and managers.

Starting Point

Setting up a product team for media

In this lesson, you’ll learn the basics for setting up a digital media product team, what it means to lead a digital product launch, fighting the immune system of an organisation and getting executive buy-in for launching the product.

Coming soon!

Week 2

Creating a unique value proposition for your product. Definition or refining it.


Week 3

What does the end-to-end service journey of our solution look like? What are the key stages along that journey? Creating a product, not a feature. Will people pay for it?


Week 4

Evolving your digital product - AB testing, prototyping V1, V2, V3 until you get to an MVP.


Week 5

So, your product is still not ready to go. What to do.


Week 6

Making your product memorable: Taking the next step - front end- UI, UX, design visuals, back end (building tech) and making everything work together. PS: This is still a minimum viable product (MVP)!



Week 7

Final tweaks, your product is almost ready. Ready is better than perfect. Remember this is an MVP. Revisiting what is a good product design.



Week 8

Planning your launch. Getting executives back up, planning your launch strategy.



Week 9

Launch Week - metrics, data, measuring impact.

Experiment #1

It's time to launch and track metrics to learn and evolve your product. Content and knowledge on how to (growth hacking metrics and data.


Week 10
Experiment #2

Final learnings and planning the next steps of product evolution. 

Juliana Proserpio

Chief Design Officer / Founder

Juliana is the co-founder of Echos, an Innovation Lab, school and consulting firm focused on desirable futures. Over the last nine years, Juliana has worked to develop an innovation ecosystem in Australia and Brazil to foster desirable futures through design.

She has led projects in different industries such as healthcare, media, news, retail, technology and consumer goods.

Juliana speaks about the power of design to create desirable futures. She was featured in events such as the Global Innovation Summit in San Jose, California, TEDxMaua in Sao Paulo, Brazil, What Design Can Do and the Sydney Design Festival. Since 2015, Juliana became a judge at the first William Drenttel Award for Excellence in Design.

Juliana has more than 10.000 hours working closely with clients on facilitation design within different industries.

Ricardo Ruffo

CEO / Founder

As an innovation expert and entrepreneur, Ricardo is the co-founder and CEO at Echos, a global innovation lab driven by design.

He is a consultant and speaker on topics like innovation, entrepreneurship, business design and growth hacking.

Ricardo is a specialist in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, with extensions in renowned schools like MIT and Berke- ley in the United States.

Ricardo studied Social Innovation at the School of Visual Arts in New York and Design Thinking by HPI – D.school in Germany.

Daniel Ieraci

HCD / Service Designer & Facilitator

Daniel is a Human Centred Designer and Facilitator. He has spent the last decade working on innovation projects for a range of organisations through a variety of agencies, and most recently worked on the Google News Initiative’s Design Accelerator program across the APAC region.

Daniel has trained and worked alongside numerous teams from different organisations throughout the GNI DA program helping them not only gain a deep understanding of design thinking and innovation, but also assisting them to define clearer objectives and valuable outcomes for their audiences through human centred design. Daniel has studied at such institutions as Swinburne University of Technology and Academy Xi and worked across Melbourne, London, Rome, New York, San Francisco and Sydney.

Paulo Armi

Visual Designer and Design Thinker

With over 10 years experience as a designer, Paulo has worked on concept, direction and design of products and services across digital, print and emerging technologies.

Specialised in creative leadership, he has always applied human-centred methods for creative problem solving and innovation, and has a strong background in consumer behaviour as well as entrepreneurship.

Paulo likes to combine conceptual and executional excellence in his projects and works extremely well with teams.

Interests: Startup, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Agile, Empathy, Emotional Intelligence, Creative Process, and Human Behaviour.