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Newspace

While staying informed is crucial, maintaining a healthy mental space in this Digital Age is just as important. Newspace is an app that redefines the newsfeed experience, encouraging users to be mindful and intentional with their news consumption. By weaving empathy and compassion into this "new space" we hope users can cultivate a healthier relationship with the news.

While staying informed is crucial, maintaining a healthy mental space in this Digital Age is just as important. Newspace is an app that redefines the newsfeed experience, encouraging users to be mindful and intentional with their news consumption. By weaving empathy and compassion into this "new space" we hope users can cultivate a healthier relationship with the news.

While staying informed is crucial, maintaining a healthy mental space in this Digital Age is just as important. Newspace is an app that redefines the newsfeed experience, encouraging users to be mindful and intentional with their news consumption. By weaving empathy and compassion into this "new space" we hope users can cultivate a healthier relationship with the news.

Role

UX Researcher and Designer, UX Writer, Project Manager

Team

Emily Zhou, Kane Gu, Minnie Chau

Time

5 weeks, 2021

Opportunity

A sense of helplessness

During the COVID-19 outbreak, the world was immediately flooded with an endless stream of news and media content, bombarding us with reports on escalating death tolls, emerging variants, and a seemingly never-ending deterioration of the situation. It felt as if everything was slowly descending into a state of helplessness.

Trust and news consumption

Trust and news consumption: The public was also navigating information about the virus from various sources with differing of levels of credibility. The need to verify the accuracy of information only added more cognitive demand to this process.

The public was also navigating information about the virus from various sources with differing of levels of credibility. The need to verify the accuracy of information only added more cognitive demand to this process.

How do we engage with the news during times of uncertainty?

User research

We spoke to three women about how interact with the news during the pandemic and whether they noticed a change in their habits. We discovered the following:

Participant H

Social media is "dumpster fire"—not an ideal platform to generate productive and objective conversations

Participant J

Feels overwhelmed but also wants "to do more after reading the news" and help make a difference

Participant M

Finds herself closing the news app when she feels that she has had "enough bad news"

Across participants, we also noticed a few consistent patterns:

Engagement

2 users actively seek out news on their own, while one user comes across news on social media

Fact-Check

2 users conduct their own research after reading news content and articles

Feeling Sad

Feeling Sad

All 3 feel dejected and overwhelmed after reading negative news

Key challenge

The common thread running through all three narratives was that staying informed with the news comes with a cost. When so much of the news is negative, it becomes mentally draining to stay engaged and updated with current affairs.

Yet, accompanying this experience of news fatigue and feeling of sadness is the desire to better understand the situation and to help in ways that are within their locus of control.

How can we create a news feed that is compassionate of the psychological demands of news consumption?

Building our vision

Putting our creative muscles to use, we began envisioning a news feed experience that addresses the key challenge we uncovered from our user research.

Storyboards

We translated our visions into storyboards. Solutions like the mood-booster news section and the resource repository for social advocacy were met with positive feedback. However, rating an article as a mechanism for fact-checking was met with doubt, as ratings may not serve as an objective rating of content accuracy.

Our guiding compass

Before building our app, we established key values that form the core of Newspace. Specifically, we want to create a newsfeed experience that allow users to:

Stay Informed

Keep up-to-date with current events

Keep up-to-date with current events

Take Action

Take Action

Take action on causes that matter to you

Take action on causes that matter to you

Feel Grounded

Feel Grounded

Stay mindfully attuned and take care of yourself

Stay mindfully attuned and take care of yourself

Competitive Analysis

Newspace is built with features that are not prevalent across traditional news applications and platforms, suggesting a gap we can explore and fill.

Sketches and flows

We illustrated the main aspects of the app, creating a framework to build our vision.

Wireframes

We delved into the lo-fi prototype to demonstrate the various actions a user can perform throughout their journey.

Landing + Sign up

Home + Filter

Article + Fact-check

Mood + Articles + Mindfulness exercises

Explore

Account Settings

Landing + Sign up

Home + Filter

Article + Fact-check

Mood + Articles + Mindfulness exercises

Explore

Account Settings

Landing + Sign up

Home + Filter

Article + Fact-check

Mood + Articles + Mindfulness exercises

Explore

Account Settings

Style guide

Newspace has two main sections: the home section featuring "formal news" and the "mood" section featuring more inviting content. We created two style guides to illustrate the two distinct aesthetics.

Home: simple, classy, professional

Mood: warm, inviting, thoughtful

Usability Testing

We demoed the prototype to five users and asked them to give their thoughts. Users mentioned how they can see themselves using the app and gave us feedback to inspire the next wave of iterations.

Before

After

Spicing up the mood

Spicing up the mood

Spicing up the mood

It was awkward for trending and mood to be in the same section due to differences in content.

So we moved mood to the bottom nav bar and made it visually distinct from trending.

It was awkward for trending and mood to be in the same section due to differences in content. So we moved mood to the bottom nav bar and made it visually distinct from trending.

It was awkward for trending and mood to be in the same section due to differences in content. So we moved mood to the bottom nav bar and made it visually distinct from trending.

Following naming conventions

Following naming conventions

Our app's "For You" is intended to show users the topics they are currently following.

On other apps, "For You" suggest new content for users to explore. So, we renamed "For You" to "Following".

Our app's "For You" is intended to show users the topics they are currently following. On other apps, "For You" suggest new content for users to explore. So, we renamed "For You" to "Following".

"For You" is intended show users the topics they are currently following. On other apps, "For You" suggest new content for users to explore. So, we renamed "For You" to "Following".

Before

After

Before

After

Adding more to the mix

Adding more to the mix

Our sign up did not reflect the variety of topics (from trending+mood) users can follow.

So we added more topics during sign up to suggest the diversity of content Newspace supports.

Our sign up did not reflect the variety of topics (from trending+mood) users can follow. So we added more topics during sign up to suggest the diversity of content Newspace supports.

Our sign-up did not reflect the variety of topics (from trending+mood) users can follow. So we added more topics during sign-up to suggest the diversity of content Newspace supports.

Final Prototype

Onboarding

Home

Article

Explore

Following

Mood

Self-care

Take Action

Disconnect

Learnings

Limitations of convenience sampling

Due to time constraints, we utilized convenience sampling. If we were able to continue developing the platform, it would be ideal to test this application's usability across a demographic group that is more representative of the current landscape of social media users.

Engaging all stakeholder for a systematic approach

We mainly centered our research around the needs of users. In order to design a systematic solution to the issue of healthy media consumption, it is also necessary to involve stakeholders who stand on the other side of this issue—social media platforms.

Let's connect!

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