Date: 2016
Role: Principal Product Designer
Role: Principal Product Designer
tl;dr
Headlines is an experimental application using news media tweets and text analytics AI to provide users with reliable news from pluriform sources. Launched by Emkore Limited in early 2016, I was responsible for the UX/UI design for both native Android and iOS smartphone apps.
Brief
Using native design principles (Human Interface Design and Material Design), design a minimalist, distraction-free UX/UI for an Android and iOS smartphone app. The design aesthetic needs to be clear, unbiased and create a distraction free environment for engaging with news.
Deliverables
1. Native UX/UI for Android Smartphone users.
2. Native UX/UI for iOS Smartphone users.
3. Appropriate UX writing & documentation
Background
While Twitter (now X) is an excellent way to gather news from a diverse group of sources, it is by no means a great way to digest it. When following a large amount of accounts, effectively engaging with content is difficult. Many tweets report the same news event using different wording, and credible reporting is often drowned out by opinionated, speculative or false info.
The result is a broken UX, forcing the user to scroll through an endless list in order to find relevant news. While Twitter “Lists” makes it easier to sort content, it doesn’t solve the problem of duplicate news reporting by different (or the same) accounts.
The result is a broken UX, forcing the user to scroll through an endless list in order to find relevant news. While Twitter “Lists” makes it easier to sort content, it doesn’t solve the problem of duplicate news reporting by different (or the same) accounts.
User Experience
My first step in defining Headlines’ UX was to create a list displaying news events instead of outlets. Reason being that reputable outlets too tweet a lot of non-news or duplicate tweets on the same event. To solve repetitive tweeting on the same event, we used Reuter’s Open Calais API (Intelligent Tagging) to perform text analytics and compile tweets reporting on the same event into a single list entry. This happens regardless of which outlet reports the news.
We used the “shared” counter to rank order tweets reporting the same event, and cumulative shares of all tweets reporting an event to rank order events themselves. The result is a list displaying news events as reported on by verified, credible news outlets, ranking events from most shared to least shared.
Tapping an event will provide the user with details:
Tapping an event will provide the user with details:
1. Image (if available)
2. List of original tweets
3. Overview of all news outlets reporting the event + links to the original story.
4. Meta data including how often a story was shared and time of reporting.
User Interface
In line with the objective of providing a distraction-free way of news gathering, I used a muted color palette for the UI consisting of shades of grey and a single shade of red as accent color. To further minimize distraction, I designed the user interface to look native to both Android and iOS users, using Material Design and Human Interface Design principles respectively. Any images included in tweets are displayed in black & white on the news event overview list, and in full color in the story detail page.
The result is a minimalist looking app that feels familiar and is intuitive to use.
The result is a minimalist looking app that feels familiar and is intuitive to use.
Retrospective
Headlines’ success is variable. We learned quickly that only counting shares isn’t enough to determine the importance of a news event (turns out that a lot of people share nonsense on Twitter… who knew!). And while Reuter’s Open Calais API is (was) one of the most advanced AIs for text analytics, it is by no means perfect.
All the same; Headlines is an excellent tool for those who wish to get the news headlines from various sources without distraction.
All the same; Headlines is an excellent tool for those who wish to get the news headlines from various sources without distraction.
Credit
Jonas Hartmann, Lead Developer