PRESS NEWS APP
PRESS is a personal concept for a news aggregator app that allows users to create and customize news feeds to see what matters most. This works by combining both Interest & Proximity in order to determine what is important to the user. The goal is to solve the issue of millennial college students’ reliance on social media for news, as well as to increase readership to local news sources.
RESEARCH
Research was done primarily through collecting sources, interviews, surveys, and competitor audits. Every note was compiled, filtered, and refined in order to distill the issues faced by the target audience to its simplest form. A large compilation of research allowed it to be concluded that college students are looking for a way to filter out the mass information that has become available through the Internet in a way that gives experts the opinions.
There must be a simple collection of curated stories that focuses on what’s important, but allows for personalization. This resulted in the creation of custom feeds, similar to custom playlist in music apps, but, keywords, topics, and sources instead of songs. Inspiration was taken from a variety of productivity aggregators, traditional news sources, and trending entertainment sites.
APPROACH
Work began on creating icons that would match the typeface, Domine, as type would be the primary visual in this app. Buttons, text blocks, user input, and grids would then be created.
The branding behind PRESS was inspired by Morse code and the impact it had on journalism as a whole. It became a near instantaneous means of communication that would allow for a direct line of news, distinct from prior methods. PRESS aims the call back to this tactile form of communication through it’s Morse code patterns, as well as present itself as personal press for the user, collecting news that they determine is important.
RESULTS
The resulting app is modular by design and allows for content that constantly changes. It allows for user customization, sharing options, and exploration of new sources that can be added to feeds. Users are able to quickly see important stories of any given subject or keyword as it relates to them and their surrounding communities. Through creating a news aggregator app for students, it allows them to continue staying up to date easily, while also showing researched articles instead of opinion pieces on social media.