Context
Budget Day is the single most volatile 24-hour period for the Indian economy. At The Economic Times, this translates into a massive "Information Chaos" i.e. millions of users hitting the platform simultaneously.
My mission as a Lead Designer was to design an experience (news system) that could translate the Finance Minister's complex policies into bite-sized news while keeping in mind the business goals. I led the design of a system that served over 2 Lakhs+ concurrent users, ensuring that even under record-breaking traffic, the experience remained seamless, fast, and intuitive.
Business Goals
To deliver a seamless experience for Budget '26, I had to solve several high-stakes 'gaps':
Visual Identity That Stands Out:
The Goal: Establish a dominant visual anchor for the ET brand.
Up until now, our Budget's logo would get lost in a "sea of sponsor logos"- making it hard for users to identify the core product. This year the target was to develop an identity that stands out.
Demographic Expansion:
The Goal: Increase younger audience footfall.
We identified a critical business goal - capturing the Gen-Z and Millennial investor. We didn't just need to be accurate; we needed to be engaging for our younger audience.
Retention and Average Time-Spent:
The Goal: Stop users from leaving after 30 seconds.
The Logic: Creating "Personalized Relevance" so users stay to calculate their own fiscal future.
Monetization Efficiency:
The Goal: Accommodate 12+ sponsors without breaking the UX.
To support high-value sponsorships, I had to think of a system capable of serving multiple variations of Budget '26 in real-time. I goal was to optimise the Ad placements for free users, while ensuring ET Prime subscribers maintained a distraction-free experience. Furthermore, a layout that can also accommodate Live TV broadcast and Live blog without breaking the core UX.
Visual Design
Developing a logo that stands out
Moving away from traditional flat design, I translated the geopolitical theme, The Power Shift, into a '3D treatment'
Also kept in mind that it should stand out from a dozen of sponsor logos. By creating visual depth, I ensured our brand stood out as an authoritative anchor.
Logo for Budget '26
A sponsor mockup to see if the logo is distinctive or not
Budget Day Impact: DOMINANCE!
Capturing the GenZ Investors
The Economic Times’ audience data revealed a median user age of ~40 years.
To ensure long-term market dominance, we identified a critical business objective: capturing the 22–30 'Next-Gen' investor without alienating our core legacy base.
But younger audiences don't want to read a 2,000-word analysis; they want bite-sized, and "Aesthetic" information.
The nudge
Sectoral Spotlights with this year's theme - The Power Lifters
Incorporating Bento Grids
To bridge the gap between "History" and "Cool," I used a vintage newspaper texture with high-contrast typography. It gamified the economic history of India, making the past 75 years of budgets consumable in a "social-story" format.
Monetization
Conditional UX
Designed 6+ core variations of the Budget day system to handle complex business requirements in real-time.
Designed distinct "Prime vs. Free" layouts, where Prime users received an ad-free, data-dense interface focused on deep analysis.
Strategically placed ads for free users, ensuring revenue targets were met without breaking the informational flow.
The Live-Blog Toggle: Built modular sections that could accommodate or hide a live blog and TV stream dynamically, depending on the user's focus.
Sponsored Section Priority: Developed a "Push Logic" for the layout, where non-sponsored sections were dynamically shifted downward to prioritize partner visibility during peak traffic hours.
Cross-Platform Scaling
Resilience at Scale
The 6-State Adaptive Logic: I scaled the 6 core variations (Free/Prime, with/without TV) to adapt dynamically. On mobile, elements like the "Live Blog" were tucked into a bottom-drawer for thumb-reach, while on desktop, they utilized the wide sidebar for maximum information density.
High-Concurrency Performance: To maintain 99.9% uptime, I worked with the engineering team to optimize assets. We used SVG icons and system-level fonts to keep the page weight under 1MB for initial load, ensuring "Everywhere" meant "Instant".
Contextual Navigation: For the mobile experience, I designed a "Sticky Header" with a real-time Nifty/Sensex ticker. This ensured that even as users scrolled through 20+ sections of content, the most critical "Chaos" data (Market Volatility) was never out of sight.
Innovation
Introducing BudgetGPT
The Goal: Provision of providing instant, personalized answers to complex fiscal queries via 'BudgetGPT'.
We thought of developing BudgetGPT that solves user's personal questions ("How does the new capital gains tax affect my mutual funds?") that a generic search results page or long news articles cannot answer instantly.
To validate the concept, I worked with the engineering team to design a functional In-House Prototype. This allowed us to stress-test the interaction logic and data-fetching patterns (mapping GPT responses to relevant ET articles) while evaluating the API infrastructure and resource overhead required for a large userbase.
Zero-Search Logic: Instead of making users type, I designed the "BudgetGPT" to live as an intuitive chat overlay with pre-set "Smart Triggers" based on the most trending queries of the hour.
Dual-Layer Validation: The response can dynamically fetch and display relevant ET articles alongside every AI answer, providing a dual-layer of validation and deep-dive reading.
However,
While the idea provided high utility, the project was strategically paused for public launch because of tech constraints, sponsorship acquisition and monetisation goals :(
National Scale Impact
My design decisions directly contributed to record-breaking engagement metrics for the 2026 Union Budget:
Unique Viewers
Total Page Views
Concurrent Active Users
#1
SEO Ranking
Increase in GenZ Footfall
Subscription Growth: The tiered UX logic (6+ variations) led to a double-digit percentage spike in ET Prime sign-ups.
Challenges
BudgetGPT
This couldn't go live this year. Reason being dev team fell short of resources. Plus we couldn't manage to get a sponsor for this. However, we are looking forward to taking it live next year.
Dev hand-offs
Stakeholders
Work In Progress. More to come.
Handcrafted with 🧡 by Brijesh.