At this moment in time me and Lo have come up with a loose concept of how we want to approach the brief, so we split up the research task by each of us looking at different areas of research that’s relevant to how we want to move forward and once our findings are done then to come together and discuss what we've found. Lo’s area of research for the brief was to analyse news sites in general and news competitors of The Telegraph, so looking at news sites such as Guardian, Independent and Huffington post and other news sites who cater for the same audience as The Telegraph.
My area of research is looking at alternative news, as I will be constructing the animation for the app I wanted to look into news sites that have adapted to digital era and are relatively different to what people might consider a news site. Other area is looking websites that aren't news sites but have become revolutionary for the way they communicate news or distribute information & looking at what kind of animation or transitioning they've used to communicate their content.
Mashable
Mashable has adapted to the digital age of news. Their news site is a unique approach on your standard news site. Mashable favours visual images over text with the majority of the site being made up off colourful images of news stories. Whereas other news sites such as The Guardian is made up of text and small amount of visuals compared to Mashable. Mashable’s intended audience is clear from the start, they cater towards more of an informal demographic of young people. The visual nature of the site helps retain the excitement and interest of it's readers. Sometimes news sites that are text heavy can be repetitive and tiresome, so by introducing visuals it becomes a break in between long pieces of text and keeps the user engaged.
The overall structure is stripped back with the user journey being simple to navigate the site. Removing the clutter and having all news stories on one page with the options to see 'what's hot' and 'Rising news stories' allow the site to engage with social media, widening their viewership and becoming a trending topic from the connectivity. Linking with social media is something we could apply to the brief. The only issue being the intended user. We’re going to be aiming at a younger audience but still want the loyal readers to be able to engage just as well so by applying the social media aspect the old users might suffer as they aren’t as tech savvy.
Flipboard
Flipboard has been a game changer in terms of catering news that is personal to the news reader. Similar to Tumblr the news app allows the user to pick and choose what categories they like before singing up. Once chosen all other news topics become irrelevant and disregarded. Putting the user in control of what they see will allow for a quick news experience, scanning through relevant topics to make sure they get their daily dose of news within a short amount of time. It's groundbreaking and an aspect that all news sites should follow. Flipboard also applies the same visual nature as Mashable demonstrating the trend news sties are taking to re-engage news readers. Even from the beginning the visuals are there, sparking the imagination and making the experience more magical and the news more interesting.
The other interesting aspect of Flipboard is using animation to play of their 'flip' theme. Evidence below, when you swipe up to change the news story the page acts like a calendar, like someone is flipping over the page. This animation captures the users imagination, cleverly incorporating the brands name and theme within the app and in that aspect making it more personal to the user. This animated transition is something that we are looking to try for our concept as we have decided on the theme of a stack of cards, so taking influence from Fipboard, I could use animation to create an animated transition based of our theme of cards to engage and create a modernise user experience.
Tinder
Even though Tinder isn't a news site, It's change the dating scene by implementing a swiping animation to quickly scan through potential partners. The idea of quickly scanning through people is very eye opening and has become the quickest way to find the 'perfect match' within a short period of times without looking through hundreds of people. Another important aspect to expand on is the use of icons. No words have been used to say what you have to do, its self explanatory by swiping right to say that you're 'interested' and shipping left to 'reject' the person. It's weird to think that dating has come to this stage where you can accepted or reject a person within a split second without even knowing that person. How can we use this concept within news? How can the user simple swipe motion to scan through hundreds of news story by either flicking left or right?
The app also incorporates the theme of cards when you swipe. It makes you think that there are a stack of cards underneath, giving you the illusion of variety, keeping the user engaged into thinking that theres more potential to be seen.
Snapchat
Social media is fast becoming people's source of news, especially the younger demographic. Social media is becoming the place where news stories break and where the first discussions take place allowing the user to get a first glimpse of peoples reaction when it's still fresh and raw even before news sites can break the story. Snap chat is an example of this trend taking place. Snapchat is a place where people only post videos and images, companies have taken advantage of this platform to promote and expand their viewership, even news sites such as Buzzfeed have used snapchat to still get news out to people in the form of videos and images. Snapchat is revolutionising the way we view information, we no longer need text to get the full story. People from all over the world can get news from their favourite site from other sources and not just their website.
This type of gathering of information is unique to the news world and is something me and Lo could think about. Is they're a way of using only video and image to create a unique news platform? How could we incorporate different methods of animation and transition to make our concept stronger and more developed? Like tinder, do we even need writing or could we keep it short and precise or only use keywords like Mashable. In order to keep up with the digital word, news needs to change with the time and it seems that the modern news is being more integrated with other social media platforms to reach out to untapped users.
No comments:
Post a Comment