REINVIGORATING NEWS FOR GENERATION Z
The Washington Post Case Study
MOBILE APP DESIGN · USER TESTING · RESEARCH
Overview
The Washington Post is a leading news outlet with 3 million paid subscribers. In the Top Global News Media Competitors, it ranks second, just after the New York Times. Daily news circulation has always been decent, but since the rise of the internet, it has seen a steady decline.
TEAM
Solo UX Designer
MY ROLE
Responsible for conceptualization, research, prototyping
TIMELINE
July 11 – 31 2022 (3-week sprint)
TOOLS
Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Trello
Video Overview
Problem Space
Generation Z’s declining attention span is a real, known issue. It’s gotten to the point where there are articles on how UX Designers should be designing differently to suit Gen Z attention spans.
In 2015, Microsoft released a study stating that the average Gen Z attention span is 8 seconds—4 seconds shorter than millennials. And shorter than a… goldfish?!
This is mind, it’s not surprising that Gen Z consumes less news than any other generation.
But Gen Z consumes the most news from social media than any other generation.
(Source: American Press Institute | Pew Research Center)
All this in mind, I beg the question:
PROBLEM STATEMENT
How might we reinvigorate the way The Washington Post presents news to garner the interest of Generation Z?
Research
Off the bat, I conducted a survey on a majority Gen Z audience. Based on the responses received, I found that:
These statistics told me a few important things.
Social media presence is only becoming more and more vital
Shorter, summarized articles will likely keep the attention of Gen Z better
An alternative option to paywalls would be beneficial to keep a larger general userbase.
📰 Onto designing! 📰
Sketching & Wireframing
After a quick sketch to help me visualize what I had in mind, I jumped straight into high-fidelity prototyping, given the time constraints of this project.
My final prototype consisted of 7 screens with a few specific focuses:
“Listen to article” is an important feature for those who lose focus reading, and have an easier time listening.
A majority of Gen Z interviewees mentioned preferring listening to podcasts to reading articles
“The Daily Rundown” is significant for those who don’t have time to be reading through articles. Instead, they can get a quick overview of the most important topics of recent in 90 seconds.
This concept was loosely based off of the popularity of short TikTok and Instagram reel style videos.
“My Post” is for those who lose interest scrolling through the homepage, and would rather look at articles they hold a specific interest in.
Other case studies I’ve conducted have demonstrated the value of personalization to the average consumer.
The “Summarize articles” setting is for those who would rather read a short summary over a deep dive. If the user would prefer for this to be the case for every article they read, they can toggle this in settings.
Gen Z interviewees mentioned preferring short, summarized articles a majority of the time, only in specific instances preferring a deep dive.
Video Overview
Final Sentiments
To focus on user retention in the younger generations, I made sure to highlight some features already included in The Washington Post that were important for keeping the attention of Gen Z, such as being able to listen to articles as podcasts rather than read them. In addition, I added new features: shorter articles and a summarized daily rundown.
Being Gen Z myself and an avid social media doom scroller, I felt like I was the ideal user to conduct this testing on, but I still needed third party perspectives.
Given the time constraints of this project (3 weeks), I was unfortunately not able to develop or implement my ideas to the extent that I wished to. However, this case study was definitely a great starting point for a number of potential projects.