UI/UX Design
Project Overview
The Quokka Chronicle is a prospective mobile app which aims to improve the user’s relationship with news media by offering daily solutions journalism and local news.
My Role
This was a group project of 3 people. I worked alongside Olivia Butler and Vanessa Rogers as the group’s project manager and creative director.
Design Process
We worked on this project in 4 core phases:
1. User Research 2. Definition & Ideation 3. Prototyping and 4. Testing & Iterating
You can navigate to each phase via the table of contents below
Design Software
Figma
Krita
Illustrator
Procreate
Table of Contents
Introduction
Simple, fun and engaging, the Quokka Chronicle could easily compliment the day-to-day news diet of a user who wants to see more of the bright side of their world and local community.
Read global, help local, and start your day feeling better about the amazing world we live in.
Phase 1: User Research
Beginning the process we created an interview plan to ask interviewees about their feelings on news.
Number of Interviews:
7
Interview Length:
5 – 10 min.
Questions we were most interested in the answers to:
– How much time do you engage with the news every day?
– Do you think that the news focuses on topics that you’re interested in?
– How much time do you think you would spend learning about different locations around the world per week if at all? (Frequently, Daily, Every-Other Day, Weekly, Etc.)
“Quote”
– Anonymous Interviewee
Phase 2: Problem Statement
The Problem
Despite our interviewees spending less than 30 minutes looking at news each day, they report that their moods have starkly decreased as a result, and that news is exhausting and highly negative. Due to this, they have great interest in hearing positive news, but aren’t sure where to find it.
The Solution
The Quokka Chronicle! An app that has a positive effect on the user’s daily life. Educating the user about current news and intriguing them with history, facts, and exploration.
We chose to use a user persona to get a better idea of what a young, potential user of the Quokka Chronicle could be.
Phase 3: Iteration
It was now time to draw inspiration from deemed competitors to begin designing the app’s interface.
We chose to analyze four primary applications which we saw as occupying the same role in a user’s news intake day to day. These were BBC, GoodNewsNetwork, Reddit, and YouTube.
Phase 4: Prototyping
We had built out a prototype based on the layout I had sketched onto notecards. Using it, we designed a Guerrilla testing plan to get as much feedback as needed to move on to our next phase.
Text here
Number of tests:
5
Test Length:
5 min.
The Takeaways
We got a lot of insight from the user testing, some that we were aware of and some that we weren’t.
The primitive nature of the prototype restricted the commentary that we received, but the recommendations we did receive would improve our designs moving forward.
This spurred us to make a few changes:
- To remove ad locations altogether
- To allow the splashscreen to naturally transition rather than requiring a tap
- To remove the ‘search’ tab
Conclusion
This was a fantastic project, and I couldn’t be happier and more proud of my team and our final product. There were certainly hiccups, though I could absolutely see transforming this app into a valid, functional product.