Duration
10 weeks, Spring 2017
Team
2 Designers
Client
Class Project + USA TODAY
+ Research
+ Mobile
+ UI/UX
USA TODAY
Context
A redesign of the mobile app targeted toward a growing millennial audience. Because millennials will no longer engage with traditional, long form news, our objective is to engage the newer audience.
Goals
Engage the target audience with an updated directed layout, customizable sharing, and a new rewarding experience that not only keeps them in app but encourages frequent visiting.
01 - Features
A personalized brief of 8-10 articles to quickly update the user on relevant news that scrolls right into the remainder of the Life section without change in environment to keep them engaged.
Your Brief
02 - Features
Each category-specific page will have the most relevant media as a side-scroll across the top for easy access and instant gratification upon arrival. The most sought after content will always be at the top. In the case of movies it will have trailers, people would have galleries, music would have albums, etc.
Categories
03 - Features
Once in the article the user has the option to share the article normally or do so by highlighting the relevant portion of text to share. This empowers the user by allowing more customization and control over their shared content.
Share / Highlight
Note: All shared content will be branded as USA TODAY for advertising and establishing a reputation among the new audience.
04 - Features
An additonal feed which curates social media posts related to articles in USA TODAY. This shows USA TODAY is up to date with the most current content and encourages users to stay in the app by bringing social media to them. Provides discoverability through another entry point.
Social Feed
Process
User Research
We conducted an informal survey among 22-35 year olds to gauge the current engagement with news as well as the amount of traffic through social media.
78.6%
share news through social media
The millennial generation is known as 'content creators' and like to share what they have created or seen on social media. The app should provide customizable share tools to support this.
46.4%
receive their news through social media
Twitter's categorization on the App Store has changed from 'Social Media' to 'News'. 9 in 10 Twitter users reported that one reason they use Twitter is to consume news and of those users, about 3/4 use it daily.
42.9%
only check their news once a day
In order to get more engagement from millennials, the app should understand research conducted on millennials up to this point and create content and structure designed to keep the user in app while also being a convenient place to get the news if only once a day.
