Brief

Develop novel and effective ideas to better engage Generation Z individuals and young-middle aged women to participate and understand the news more effectively.

Client

BBC R&D

What we did

We came aboard to assist the team in the third phase of the project which focused on understanding the news better & facilitating better participation with the news.

Our goals were to help adapt the design sprint process to better meet the requirements of the team and fit with the previous learnings from past sprints.

We engaged in a 8 day sprint which included user research, ideation, rapid prototyping and concept testing.

Results

We created five prototypes named Simplify, Annotate, Levels, Progress and WhoSaidWhat all exploring different aspects of understanding the news better and more user participation with new contents.

Here are two examples:

Simplify - alternative simplified versions of some paragraphs in a story to provide more context or background information

Perspectives — presents a selection of short video and audio clips — each from a different point of view — to address the audience’s need for different viewpoints on a story.

In the words of Tristan Ferne of BBC R&D, lead producer of this project — “Overall it worked well. It certainly felt quite fast, with little time to stop and think, though personally I think it’s important to timebox these activities so we don’t get stuck overthinking things.”

The project most recently won the best digital innovation at BBCNews awards (June 2019)