Through a series of iterative collaborative sessions and design exploration, The Guardian Innovation Lab wanted to make experiments around the future of mobile live news coverage — exploring new formats that are more scannable, summaries that adapt to context, including editorial and design treatments, reading experience interactions, and service-based features. Code and Theory was asked to deliver a series of mobile prototypes, tested through user testing sessions, in order to inform The Guardian Innovation Lab’s editorial and technological agenda.
The project started by a phase of user research developed to confirm or challenge initial assumptions. Supported by a series of simple stimuli, created to illustrate potential editorial services and features, we collected feedback from a panel of 10 users, via thorough recruiting, scripting, interviewing, and reporting process. Moving into ideation, and informed by user research, we held a series of collaborative workshops in order to define and prioritize a large series of features and services. In parallel, we developed a visual language and interaction paradigm and initiated a design process to generate a series of interactive mobile prototypes. In the third stage of the program, we gathered feedback on the prototypes, and identified areas for improvements to create a refined collections of 12 services and features.
This program allowed The Guardian to define primary user types, as well as identify key topics that will shape the future of mobile live news coverage for The Guardian newsroom, and the industry at large. The Guardian has now successfully moved into the integration phase and has released the new features on its mobile apps. You can read more about it here.
Below, you can find materials from earlier phases of concepting.
My role: research & testing, ideation & concept development, product strategy, UX design.
Engagement lead: M. Mingasson, 2016.