The Washington Post National News App
The Process
This was not the usual process to follow in the UX world. However, sometimes you need to adapt and adjust! We had started with the tablet designs first as the business needs made the Kindle Fire top priority. Next on the list was the mobile phone designs! This was a high visibility project and the owner of The Washinton Post, Jeff Bezos, was very involved in reviewing and monitoring the design progress. We needed to have our thoughts and research behind our design decisions to convince him we were making the best choices for an amazing news experience!
Comfort and reachability was a key consideration in deciding how to navigate through the app. Providing research with stakeholders was key to move forward with design choices such as vertical scroll over horizontal scroll.
Competitive Analysis was a significant part of the design research process. Exploring, compairing, learning what worked, and what did not work from other app designs.
Wireframing, sketching and ideating
The problem had already been identified. The mission and intent of designing a new mobile app experience for The Washington Post was to expand readership and focus on bringing in millenials to an addicitive, easy to use news experience. How could we share and captivate a reader in a short amount of time? Our conclusion: with beautiful imagery and revealing headlines to lure them deeper into the story.
Sketching Ideas for app features
Ideating on Saving Articles
Prototyping and High fidelity Designs
Creating protoypes was also a key part of the design process. This helped prove if ideas actually worked or did not work. How do we know what the behavior will be? What happens next? What is the animation? Being able to answer these questions was a major selling point to communicate with stakeholders, the product team and developers.
PRODUCT FEATURES
• INTUITIVE NAVIGATION: Easily browse through and between sections.
• EASY VIEWING: Swipe or scroll through articles, then select and read full stories.
• STREAMLINED DESIGN: Enjoy an uncluttered, engaging reading experience that makes it easier to find—and read—the stories that matter to you.
• IN-DEPTH READING: Immerse yourself in stories where the focus is on storytelling—enhanced by bold photos and graphics.
• AWARD-WINNING COVERAGE: Stay informed with award-winning national reporting and expertly curated stories.
• FREQUENT UPDATES: Stay connected 24/7 with breaking news and other important updates throughout the day.
• NEWS ALERTS: See images, headlines, and short excerpts of articles right in the expanded notification view.
• 3D TOUCH SUPPORT: Get a sneak peek at top headlines, right from our icon using Quick Actions.
Test and Iterate
After designing and developing and releasing this new app into the wild, the design job is never done. In fact, it has just begun. Working with the product team, Product managers and monitoring feedback and reviews (as well as analytics) we continue to monitor and refine the design to be the optimal experience for our users. We take in feedback, watch for patterns in comments and requests to see what modifications need to be made. This is also key for expanding to other devices for future designs such as watch and desktop web app.
