UX London: UX of News

by May 28, 2014

In his The UX of News presentation at UX London 2014 Martin Belam shared how a news organization was able to adapt to mobile and social audiences with new product designs. Here are my notes from his talk:

  • New product UsVsThem: no long articles, everything tweetable, visual, mobile, social. Instead focused on games and sharable content.
  • People share content when in awe, or when it has a personal connection to them: I know where to find cool content, or here's my beliefs.
  • Every successful project you worked on probably had a small team but most companies still put together big groups for projects.
  • Mobile is absolutely everything. 85% of usage for UsVsThem was on mobile. Anytime something goes viral, most of the peak traffic happens on the phone.
  • Get the mobile experience right, even if it is at the expense of the desktop. Don't create a suboptimal mobile experience in favor of the desktop.
  • Twitter is the canary, Facebook sends the traffic. Test it out on Twitter, but optimize for Facebook.
  • People appreciate more depth in content (even on mobile).
  • How do you boil down to one or two use cases? When someone arrives on your site, what are the two things you want them to do? Boil down navigation to the minimum amount necessary.