Case Study · Mediacorp

meConnect

Designing a unified identity for Mediacorp's digital ecosystem — one login for everything.

Case study being expanded

Overview

Small brief.
Larger than expected.

meConnect is Mediacorp's single sign-on service — the authentication layer that allows users to access the full suite of Mediacorp's digital products with a single account. Before meConnect, each platform managed its own login, its own registration, and its own notion of who a user was. The vision was to unify this: one identity, across everything.

I came to this project a couple of months into joining Mediacorp, while working alongside the team on the melisten revamp. The product manager approached me to take it on independently — it was initially scoped as a relatively contained piece of work. It grew.

The first cut of designs was done solo, reviewed with the PM, and taken to a formal management presentation. The concept and initial screens were well received. What followed was the detailed work of designing the full authentication flow — registration, login states, error handling, and the logic of connecting multiple products through a single, coherent experience.

An SSO login screen looks simple. What lives behind it — all the states, flows, and edge cases — is anything but.

Scope

One account.
Eight products.

At the time of design, meConnect unified authentication across eight Mediacorp digital products — spanning video, audio, news, and lifestyle. Each product had its own audience and context, but all would share a single login experience.

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mewatch
ml
melisten
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merewards
cn
CNA
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8world
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Berita Harian
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Seithi
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8days

The Challenge

Deceptively
complex.

01
Integration across eight distinct products Each product had its own context, audience, and technical constraints. Designing an authentication experience that felt at home as an entry point to all of them — without being generic or cold — required careful thinking about what a shared identity layer should feel like.
02
Registration and account creation flows First-time users across eight products needed a consistent, low-friction path to creating an account. The registration flow had to handle a range of scenarios — new users, returning users, social login options — while remaining simple and clear at each step.
03
Login states and edge cases Authentication flows are only as good as how they handle failure. Forgotten passwords, incorrect credentials, account conflicts, and session management all required considered design — states that are often invisible in a good experience, but deeply felt when they go wrong.
04
Scope that grew What began as a contained project expanded as the full complexity of cross-product authentication became clearer. Managing that growth — maintaining design coherence while the scope evolved — was an exercise in staying organised and communicating clearly with stakeholders.

Approach

Starting with
the first impression.

The login screen is the first thing a user sees when they want to access any Mediacorp product. It needed to feel trustworthy, clear, and consistent — while being light enough not to get in the way of what users actually came to do. That balance shaped every decision: from the language used in prompts and error messages, to the hierarchy of actions on each screen.

Working independently meant making a lot of decisions without an immediate design peer to pressure-test them. This placed a higher premium on being systematic — documenting rationale, mapping out every state and transition, and bringing a complete picture to review sessions rather than incremental fragments. The PM relationship was central to this process. Regular alignment ensured the design stayed grounded in technical reality as the scope grew.

The management presentation was a milestone worth noting. Taking a solo first cut of a product to senior stakeholders — early in a new role, on a project that had grown beyond its original brief — required both conviction in the design decisions and the ability to communicate the thinking behind them clearly. It went well.

Contribution

Owned from
brief to presentation.

This was an exercise in end-to-end design ownership — from the initial concept through to a formal management review, and beyond into the detailed flow design that informed the final product.

UX Design UI Design Authentication Flow Design Cross-product Integration Interaction Design Stakeholder Presentation

Outcomes

The connective
tissue of Mediacorp's
digital products.

A unified authentication experience across eight products meConnect became the single entry point to Mediacorp's digital ecosystem — a common identity layer that simplified access for users across a diverse range of content and services.
Management sign-off on the design concept The formal presentation was well received — the concept and initial flows were approved, giving the project a clear mandate to move into detailed design and development.
A design that endured and expanded The meConnect experience has continued to serve Mediacorp's products since its launch, with the design informing iterative improvements and extending to cover additional products over time.
A foundation for personalisation A shared identity layer created the conditions for personalised experiences across Mediacorp's platforms — something that would have been difficult to achieve without a unified account system.

Reflection

On the value of
doing something properly.

What I remember most about this project is the quiet satisfaction of watching something I had designed become the front door to a large part of what Mediacorp offered online. The login screen is not a glamorous piece of design work — most users interact with it for seconds before moving on. But it matters enormously, and getting it right is a form of respect for the people using it.

Working on it early in my time at Mediacorp also taught me something about how to operate independently under ambiguity. When scope expands unexpectedly, the response that serves the work best is not to pull back or wait for clearer direction — it is to stay organised, communicate proactively, and keep making good decisions in the spaces between formal checkpoints.

I also came to appreciate how much design thinking is embedded in the things users never notice. Every error state, every confirmation message, every moment where the flow branches — these are decisions. Making them well, consistently, across a complex system, is the craft that holds an experience together.

The best authentication experience is the one users don't remember — because it simply worked.

Work in progress — This case study is being progressively documented. Screen designs, flow diagrams, and further detail on specific design decisions will be added over time.