Teams at BBC News, Al Jazeera and CBS ran breaking news from shared accounts. The tools gave them no better option.
Twitter, now X, is a global social media platform where users share thoughts, news and media through short-form posts. It operates as a real-time public forum for news, networking and discovering what's being discussed worldwide. This work was carried out when the platform was Twitter.
less password sharing
more use of access tools
of bad access data cleared
Professional teams posted to Twitter under one account, at speed, around the clock. At BBC News, Al Jazeera, CBS and Reach PLC, the platform’s account tools assumed one person at one keyboard, so every newsroom built the same workaround: share the password.
We researched how those teams actually worked and designed a system that matched it. Password sharing dropped 18%.
Breaking news doesn’t wait for permissions. A team covering an unfolding story needs several people able to post now, from wherever they are.
Every newsroom had independently arrived at the same solution, and it was the worst one available. The password went in a shared document, and nobody knew who had posted what.
Account management assumed a single user, and professional teams are not that
Password sharing created obvious security and compliance exposure
Posts were missed because nobody was certain who was logged in
Access data had accumulated for years without anyone able to clean it
Password sharing fell 18%. Use of the proper access tools rose 22%. Over 80% of outdated or inactive access data was cleared.
The system let people join teams, hold permissions and post on behalf of an account without a password ever changing hands. It worked because it matched what the teams were already doing rather than asking them to work differently.
Shared access without shared credentials
Clear visibility of who holds what and who posted what
Lower support load from access problems and account recovery
A design aligned to existing technical and security constraints, so it could actually ship
01
Over 1,000 professional users, to size the problem rather than assume it.
02
Direct interviews and observation inside newsrooms including BBC News and Al Jazeera, mapping the workarounds people had built.
03
Task flows documented and compared with usage analytics, so the research and the numbers told the same story.
04
A design sprint to reimagine shared access, then usability testing and iteration with Twitter's internal teams.
Great product design, professional, so fun to work with and actual results. Thunk built on the previous research work they did for us with solid designs that met our professional users’ needs. Another successful engagement with Thunk.
Felicia Williams, Design Director, Twitter
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