La Movida, the multisensory digital newspaper that revives the press.
A Design Sprint Case Study
What is happening with the newspaper business?
We live in a technological century in which all Western-world citizens have access to all types of information and data thanks to the internet.
The press is well aware of this reality and they have tried to maintain/gain users by creating the same printed contents in a digital format.
But as years have gone by, their main source of income (ads/publicity), has been diverted towards social media platforms and their diverse audiences.
This adverse situation has forced these companies to create paywalls for their readers, creating a catastrophic situation. For example, the Spanish “El Mundo” newspaper lost one million readers in November 2019 after this implementation.
According to a Reuters Institute analysis regarding these paywall systems, 52% of the press businesses think that they should implement them, making them their main source of income by offering exclusive content to their subscribers. But when users were asked if they would be willing to pay for their online news, 57% confirmed that they would not be willing to subscribe to this service.
So the challenge for this case study was the following:
How can we reinvent the press business and make it profitable again?
The team had 5 days to brainstorm ideas that could solve this issue, applying a Design Sprint methodology.
TEAM WORK
Following the usual DS process and after several group activities, we put together a physical dashboard with the following examples in order to narrow the ideation process:
Sprint questions
- Will the user be able to personalize the info?
- Will the user be able to follow specific writers/journalists within the newspaper?
- Will the user be able to evaluate each article?
- Will different newspapers collaborate together?
Customer journeys
- Ana Fernandez, a 23-year-old professional from Madrid. A strong user of Instagram who is sick of receiving invasive ads when using this app.
- Ander Garrido, a 42-year-old blind teacher from Madrid. He listens to the radio and podcasts on a daily basis but he feels frustrated as many contents are not available in Braille.
- Antonio Pérez, a 68-year-old retired farmer from León. A non-native digital user that gets frustrated using his mobile and does not differentiate real from fake news.
How Might We:
- implement a pay per seen content platform?
- make the user comfortable with advertisements?
- personalize the information that users read?
- convince the user that the information is trustworthy?
Once we had the big picture of the situation, we voted the two best ideas which were given golden stars.
My team and I had to work on one of those selected concepts, which was making information accessible to users in a multisensory way.
For further inspiration, we had a benchmarking session, followed by individual rapid demos that were further improved with each team member´s wireframes.
We then voted the design that best projected our new business proposal as you can see in the image below.
In this digital newspaper wireframed above, the user has different options to visualize each article, having to choose the format and the multisensory support. Each option has a cost (there are also free ones) and they involve interactive, VR and multimedia experiences.
DESIGN
With the winning wireframe in mind, it was time to get our individual prototype designs started in Figma!
The idea behind my digital mock-up was creating a new disruptive digital newspaper that included the visualization options from the winning wireframe and others that arose, such as including news in an “Instagram stories” format.
In terms of the newspaper branding, I chose the name “La Movida”, as a reference to the countercultural movement that took place in Madrid in the early 80´s. The definition of the phrase per sé means Shaking Things Up.
In the prototype I designed, users are able to choose the sensory support and format in which they want to see each article. To reflect this with a low number of screens, the user was prompted to start using the prototype following these actions:
- Choosing the ´Log in´option
- Flowing between screens by either:
- Pressing the available red button.
- Choosing those options already pre-selected with a red frame
Roboto was the typography I selected to use across the whole app for its simple design and consistency.
I combined the white background with a strong shade of red to catch user´s attention. And the logo´s background had a red polka dot pattern in reference to the garments used in the capital´s local festivities on the 15th of May, San Isidro.
Want to see my work of art (lol)? Please find below the prototype´s screen mockups and a Vimeo video with the interaction:
TESTING
Once I was pleased with my prototype (if you ever are), I selected four users of different ages and professional backgrounds to test it. They all used apps on a daily basis and did not have a subscription with any digital newspaper.
I used a heat map, in which each of them had to give me their feedback regarding several aspects of the digital mock-up:
They all understood its utility and expressed an overall positive experience using it. But they conveyed a rather unsatisfactory opinion in regards to the content, aesthetics, and ease of use, which I would need to iterate to move forward.
When I asked more open questions, such as what things they liked or what they would improve, this is what they answered:
PROTOTYPE ITERATION
Taking into account the results of the tests, I designed the prototype for a second time, trying to improve the interface´s aesthetics and ease of use.
I removed the login area and re-organized the information in a different way, to decrease the number of screens and provide a completely new look to the app and its branding.
I selected Phosphate typography for the logo letters as it provided a bold and retro look with capital letters. Lato typography was used for all the different sections and areas of the design due to its ease of reading.
The selected colors for this project were two flashy palette combinations very symbolic of the 80´s: turquoise and purple.
Do you want to see the revamp results? Check below the prototype mockups and the Vimeo video of this 2nd interaction version!
CONCLUSIONS
You can always gain invaluable input not only from your users, but your team members as well. The goal was very broad and I was amazed at the ideas and sketches that some of my colleagues came up with. Team work is key.
Zero ego. The user is always right. And your prototype will be nothing until it is understood by them. You will iterate until you get it right.
Broad questions bring broad answers. If you need specific answers whilst testing, ask precise questions.
From a business angle, users would be interested in having an App like the one presented in my prototype if the improvable features were iterated. But paying for that information would still be an issue for most users.
