Case Studies / HLabs
How HLabs builds award-winning interactive storytelling for the world's biggest publishers with Vev
"We put the ownership back in the hands of the designers. Using no-code tools, they can see their vision from start to finish."
Hannah Springett, CEO & Founder, HLabs
Industry
Publishing, Media, Branded content
Headquarters
London, with a global remote team
Use Cases
Immersive articles
Sponsored content
Interactive reports
Data visualisation
Content hubs
308%
increased dwell time
22%
Over benchmark on page views
5
minutes average time on page
About HLabs
HLabs is an award-winning no-code creative agency, founded in 2020 by Hannah Springett. In just five years the team grew to 42 people across 13 countries—and while the team has since scaled back to a leaner 28 full-time, the ambition hasn't. HLabs specialises in digital web design, interactive storytelling, and no-code production for enterprise publishers and global brands, building experiences for clients including POLITICO, Red Bull, The Economist, Hearst, and WWF.
The agency was born out of a frustration that most designers know well.
"When you're a designer in a traditional agency, there's a frustration about working on something and then it disappearing into the ether with developers—you never see your work come to life. No-code changed that. It allows designers to see their vision from start to finish."
Hannah Springett, CEO & Founder, HLabs
The HLabs model: story, tech, creative
The three-part framework
HLabs operates around a three-part framework. Every project starts with story, focusing on the message a client is trying to communicate, the audience they're trying to reach, and the outcome they want. Tech is the second point: HLabs works across more than 15 no-code platforms and selects the right tool for each brief rather than building toward a preferred stack. Creative is the third: the visual design, illustration, animation, and interactivity that brings the story to life.
Vev sits at the intersection of all three.
"The tech is provided by the platform. Where HLabs steps in is the visual output: the design, the illustration, the animation, the interactivity, whether the story is crafted well. We wrap all of that up."
Hannah Springett, CEO & Founder, HLabs
The model has proven itself. When Hannah ran her first AB test comparing a traditional static CMS editorial page against a fully interactive version, the result was a 308% increase in dwell time. Since then, immersive and interactive editorial storytelling websites saw engagement increase 567%. That data has been the foundation of HLabs' entire commercial argument ever since.
Why Vev: solving the three barriers
Vev as the only platform to handle policy, procurement, and pricing for enterprise
Enterprise publishers are not easy clients to move. Hannah has identified three structural barriers that any new technology must overcome in this space: policy, procurement, and pricing.
Vev, she argues, is one of the few platforms built to clear all three.
"There are three barriers to bringing on new tech in publishing: policy, procurement, and pricing. Vev is in a very good position to jump through those three hoops very quickly."
Hannah Springett, CEO & Founder, HLabs
On pricing, Vev's all-you-can-eat licence model is directly suited to publishers who may need to produce hundreds of pieces per year. Per-project or per-domain pricing structures become unworkable at that volume. With Vev, the cost is fixed, the hosting is included, and there are no surprise fees.
On procurement and policy, Vev offers something less tangible but equally important for enterprise clients: a sanctioned, safe environment in which to experiment, at a time when AI tools are proliferating faster than most organisations can assess them.
"When you've got a tech system that's signed off by your parent company, it allows designers to have a safe place to play and experiment. With the rise of AI and the unknown things being launched every week, people are fatigued. Teams don't know what their company will allow, what data they can upload, where they can experiment. A procurement-approved platform removes that anxiety."
The third factor is technical: Vev's ability to embed directly into existing CMS environments via iframe, without requiring engineering teams to rebuild infrastructure around it.
"There are big enterprise CMS systems that teams simply can't build on. Using tools that can be iframed into an existing CMS is a safer solution for enterprise clients. They can put it up, test it, take it down when needed. Vev is one of the only tools on the market that does that successfully."
Hannah Springett, CEO & Founder, HLabs
For a publisher whose content team is moving faster than their engineering roadmap, that capability is the difference between publishing in days and waiting for a development sprint.
Project spotlight
The POLITICO partnership
The relationship between HLabs and POLITICO Studio—the publisher's branded and sponsored content division—began with an exciting project designed to explore creative possibilities. Building on POLITICO's established familiarity with Vev, this first project focused on unlocking new storytelling capabilities within their existing CMS. That strong foundation paved the way for a flourishing partnership that continues to grow project by project.
“Whether we're illustrating complex data visualisations or designing interactive maps, we help bring POLITICO's brand partners' visions to life, using Vev to deliver high-impact builds that they can easily embed.”
Megan Hunt, Creative Strategy Project Manager, HLabs
HLabs operates as an extension of the POLITICO Studio team, handling end-to-end production.
For HLabs, the true measure of success goes beyond a single campaign dashboard, it’s found in the longevity and growth of the partnership itself. The ultimate validation of this collaboration is how the scope of each project continues to grow, with brand partners returning for subsequent activations.
The Hidden Depths of Neurological Disease
The Hidden Depths of Neurological Disease is an immersive feature for AbbVie, developed by POLITICO Studio in partnership with HLabs. The article explores four conditions—migraines, Parkinson's disease, stroke, and multiple sclerosis—for an engaging, politically active audience.
The brief was ambitious: raise awareness, build urgency, and create content that could move political stakeholders—not just inform them.
Approaching the topic required a visual approach that felt human rather than clinical. To achieve this, HLabs reimagined the imagery through a texture-led, collage aesthetic. By using handcrafted elements, the team transformed standard imagery into a tactile experience that beautifully mirrors the subjective reality of neurological conditions.
The approach was a deliberate counter to the growing prevalence of AI-generated imagery.
"We wanted to approach this topic with sensitivity, and communicate that through the design with tangibility. We included a lot of textures, a lot of collage. The client didn't have assets to start with, so we did extensive image sourcing, created the textures throughout, and made graphic elements in Figma before uploading them to Vev."
Megan Hunt, Creative Strategy Project Manager, HLabs
The production relied almost entirely on Vev's native capabilities:
Animations: All motion throughout the piece was produced using Vev's interactions and animation features. The updated interactions rollout had opened up new possibilities that earlier projects couldn't access.
Sliders: The piece features multiple slider components, used both for the interactive content sections and for the map sequence. These had previously required hybrid workarounds using click-trigger animations. The dedicated slider feature streamlined what was once a complex build into a clean, maintainable component.
Audio cards: Medical experts from across Europe speak directly to readers via embedded audio clips—one of the piece's defining features. Vev's native audio player offered limited design control across browsers, so Megan's team devised a workaround: show/hide click elements trigger the audio, while the visual design of the player is controlled through video components. The result is a seamless, branded experience that behaves consistently across Chrome and Safari.
Mobile: Complex components including the interactive map were built as separate desktop and mobile versions within the same Vev project, ensuring performance and legibility across all devices without compromising the visual design.
"We've worked out a good system with Vev on including a lot of different design elements without compromising performance. Things that might have been a limitation four or five years ago just aren't anymore."
Megan Hunt, Creative Strategy Project Manager, HLabs
The Results
The article achieved 22% over benchmark for page views and an average time on page of five minutes—exceptional for long-form sponsored editorial content, and particularly so for a politically engaged audience that could reasonably be considered one of the harder groups to hold attention.
The downstream impact may be the more significant story: the article's findings are now informing a stakeholder roundtable focused on policy action around neurological health, demonstrating that interactive sponsored content can do more than perform. It can become an instrument of change.
The project has since been submitted for no-code industry awards.
Element AI: early experimentation
HLabs has begun testing Vev's AI features—both the full page generator and Element AI's component generator—running a dedicated sprint in which the team generated weather widgets, gamification concepts, and interactive components to explore what was possible.
The early conclusion: component generation is where the most immediate value lies.
"The component generators have a lot more opportunity for us right now than the full page generators. It's about working out the prompting: making sure the initial requirements are in place so that what's generated is actually editable afterwards. There's a trial-and-error process to finding what works, but the potential is clear." says Megan, HLabs.
Hannah frames the broader Element AI opportunity in terms of what it enables that vibe coding cannot: generating components within a platform where the output is immediately editable, brandable, and maintainable—without the token limits, breakage risk, or maintenance overhead of externally generated code.
"The vibe coding approach is tempting, but you can't then just start editing the output. You either hardcode it or you go back around the chat loop. Vev's AI gives you something you can prompt and then change. That's huge. You need safety and security when you're working at enterprise level."
Hannah Springett, CEO & Founder, HLabs
Looking ahead: human craft in an AI moment
HLabs runs an annual research study, shared publicly at their HiFest events, on the future of digital storytelling. The recurring conclusion is that the answer to AI-generated content noise is not more technology, but more human craft.
For publishers navigating declining search traffic, rising AI-generated content, and shrinking margins, Hannah's prescription is clear: use AI for efficiency in process, not as a shortcut to craft. Use platforms like Vev to get production-quality interactive content out faster, without the engineering overhead. And keep the human strategic and creative thinking at the centre.
For HLabs and Vev, the partnership is already embodying that philosophy—in every immersive article, every interactive report, and every piece of sponsored content that makes a reader stop and stay for five minutes.
HLabs is a London-based no-code creative agency. Hannah Springett is CEO & Founder. The HLabs × Vev partnership page can be found at vev.hlabs.co.uk/partnership.