Brief News

Updated: 2.26.2023 This case study is in progress as I design and build Brief.

Role: Product Designer & PM

Short form news with bias analysis, curated daily just for you

Figma Design/Prototype - a very early sneak peek

Introduction

The incentives for news publishers and news media are directly opposed to the needs and wants of news consumers. News publishers are incentivized to write longer articles that have less information, linking out to additional articles, rather than focusing on the important details. Their goal is clicks and ads. The more they write, the longer you scroll, and the more ads you see.

News consumers on the other hand want to stay informed as quickly and enjoyably as possible, consuming as many stories and as much information in as little time as possible to they can get back to their life.

We believe there’s a better way to keep up with what matters.

Problem Statement

In a world of information overload, TikTok, Twitter and more, consumers have to fight to stay informed on the news and stories that matter to them and arbitrage the services vying for their attention.

In “brief”:

• We’re stuck in a 24-hour new cycle, where clickbait, chaos, and anger drive revenue.
• Articles are filled with fluff to make you scroll more and see more ads.
• And then, most of the time we only read the headlines anyway.

2/3 Americans that read news get it from social media

74% (a C grade) Average consumer satisfaction with digital news brands

53% of Americans read the news daily or multiple times a week

Design Goals

Provide users with a fast and convenient way to consume news stories as part of their daily news ritual. Learn over time and curate their feed, while using AI language models to distill the thousands of stories published daily into their most essential facts, with particular focus on why it matters to the reader. Fact check and compare stories across publishers to focus on facts and consensus.

User Persona

The target user for Brief is likely to be highly educated, tech-savvy, and socially conscious. They value convenience, speed, and accessibility, as well as the ability to stay informed on current events in a way that is relevant to their interests and needs. Additionally, they may be drawn to the idea of a news source that is powered by AI, which they may perceive as offering a more personalized and efficient news experience.

Key Features

We want Brief to include the following key features:

1. Short-form stories: By presenting news stories in a concise and easily digestible format, Brief allows users to stay informed without spending excessive amounts of time reading lengthy articles. I’m currently targeting a 20-30 second interaction time for each story based on customer interviews, although this may change after user testing.
2. Curation that improves over time: By curating content based on the user's reading history and behavior with a recommendation algorithm, Brief will deliver news stories that are more relevant and meaningful to the user. This presents an ethical concern around “news bubbles” that we’re working on and hope to solve once the core function is designed.
3. Delightful onboarding experience: The onboarding experience is crucial for engaging and retaining users, and curating content from the first use. No phone numbers and emails to login, just explain why they will love Brief and guide them through a narrative where they indicate their topic interests and preferred publishers.
4. "Why this matters" callout: We believe that other news aggregators and publications miss this key detail. By highlighting why a particular story matters and how it relates to the user's interests or concerns dynamically for every story, Brief can provide a more meaningful and engaging news experience.
5. Speed, speed, speed: Brief should fit into the user’s life, and seek to quickly inform and then get out of the way. By optimizing the app's performance, preloading stories in the background, and downloading them for offline reading (for readers commuting by train without connectivity or hoping to save on data costs), Brief can deliver news stories quickly and seamlessly, making it easier for users to stay informed on the go.
6. AI summarized stories: The only way to distill the 1000s of stories published every day at scale summarize them all automatically and objectively. This will allow Brief to curate the handful each user cares about without editorializing.

in progress

Design Process

Research

Ideation

Pre-Wireframe Story Testing

User Journey

Low-Fi Wireframing

Once we had a solid concept, I moved onto wireframing in Balsamiq.

Version with too much text.

Versions whittled down.

High Fidelity UI Designs

I created high-fi designs in Figma, experimenting with the core product and the landing page.

Visual Design & Style

Prototyping

I created a semi-functional prototype of the tool in Figma which allowed us to test the usability of the interface and identify any issues that needed to be addressed. We are currently conducting user testing to identify problems and refine the UI.

One current design challenge is how to address phones with increased font sizes that overflow the UI card and require scrolling as well as how to address the variable height of the UI card. Currently these use cases make the UX harder to understand and use.

Prototype Link

What’s Next

Design

Experiment with alternative feed UIs.

Design Onboarding Experience.

Design additional story discovery feed.

Testing and Iteration

Thinking even farther ahead: Dynamic Podcasts

One Win So Far

The story testing.

& Some Upcoming Obstacles

• news copyright
• news bubbles
• news bias
• monetization

Conclusion