OVERVIEW

The Challenge: People want to understand multiple viewpoints on political issues and are willing to track down numerous articles to get that information on a single story. This process can be time-consuming, as it is often unclear whether sources are vetted and provide accurate information.

Timeline: 2 weeks design sprint

Role: Project Manager / UX/UI Designer / Strategist

Tools: Pen & Paper / Whiteboard / Omnigraffle / Sketch / Adobe Photoshop / InVision / Keynote / Trello

PROCESS

DISCOVER

Where do you get your news?

The news aims to provide society with objective information about current events. In reality, the news is often just a retelling of events, passed through the lens of an author’s own subjective judgment, beliefs and attitudes. News reporting inevitably leads to inconsistencies in the coverage of the same events. 

Who can help us analyze the news?

Research / UI Analysis

I conducted a competitive analysis of various news aggregator websites to determine the nature of the information they offered. I discovered two news aggregators that were particularly focused on presenting multiple perspectives and opinions on news stories. None of the news websites/apps specialized in data or source verification, which presented an opportunity for Multiverse. By delivering news in an impartial manner, Multiverse could stand out in the market.

Both AllSides and the Perspec  specialize in showing different viewpoints of the same story.

• The simple swiping app, Perspec

• Developed by a UK publisher

• Gives you three sides to every story.

• A mix of U.K. and international news covering areas like health, technology, film, and politics.

• Negatives: Only an app & some stories are "fluff" (i.e.: "How to kill a vampire")
  

• AllSides is a responsive news website.

• Provides readers with major news stories of the day and rates where on the political spectrum publications fall.

• AllSides places links to stories from the right-left and center points of view underneath the headlines.

Partner with AllSides and here's why.

 AllSides provides readers with major news stories of the day and rates where on the political spectrum a publication falls through a mix of data analysis and user feedback. 

OPPORTUNITY FOR ALLSIDES & PALANTIR 

• Palantir has the ability to bring harder data, such as verified facts and article tone, to AllSide’s pre-existing site.

• Palantir avoids inserting itself into a potentially divisive field by using AllSides' existing rating system.

• Multiverse can rely on the AllSides team to curate the daily stories.

User Research

We created a screener survey and conducted follow-up phone interviews with the goal of understanding how people access and evaluate political news. From the discovery process, we found out the following:

• It’s difficult to find unbiased news sources

• 10 out of 11 people find value in hearing the viewpoints of people with a different perspective from theirs

• 8 out of 11 people don’t trust news on social media

• People know they should fact-check, but only 5 out of 11 actually fact-checked news they encountered

DEFINE

After conducting research on news consumption, we created two personas, Dan and Lauren, to identify features and designs for news sites.

In order for Multiverse to be a viable product it had to take into account the business and user goals.

PARTNERSHIP / BUSINESS & USER GOALS

DEVELOP

Which features should we put on the product roadmap?  There were so many to choose from but, there were 2  techniques chosen to help identify feature prioritization. The MoSCoW Method and Hill Statement (expresses the key objectives which need to be achieved). – see statements here.

DESIGN / MOSCOW

From the research, it was determined to feature the following based on necessity and time/expense.

• A way to determine credibility

• Summary of article

• News beyond mainstream

• Filter

• All Sides political rating system

DESIGN / MOODBOARD

This mood board contains everything that inspired me to find a better and more creative solution. It helped me to define the look and feel of the coming design.

DESIGN STUDIO & WHITE BOARDING

Based on the concept and personas, we then proceeded to Design Studio. In Design Studio, ideas were pinned up, evaluated, and synthesized. Once user flows and screens were established, whiteboard sketches were then refined into paper prototypes for User Testing.

DELIVER

We started with low-fidelity mock-ups. The sketches take into account mobile first as we were designing for iOS and Web. After low fidelity, we moved to creating medium fidelity. After our learnings, we scaled up to tablet and desktop designs.

KEY TAKEAWAYS: 

• When discussing Multiverse, "Stories” and “Articles" were too similar to each other and caused confusion when talking about the site.

• Renamed "Stories" to "Topics" to clarify the difference between individual articles and topics covered.

• Needed to create an expandable information area for each data visualization & chart; it will inform the user how each was made & how to read it.

• Need to add an "About" page that will allow Palantir to explain in detail how Multiverse can use data science to surface hidden relationships and meaningful insights between seemingly different data.

Annotated Wireframes

Prototype

Next Steps

1. Consult with Data Scientists This will help us build out specific visualizations

2. Work with a Data Visualization expert
   This will allow us to learn more about users and provide them with more relevant stories

3. Provide access to stories by author
   User tests indicated that many people follow certain authors

4. Gauge Interest in User Accounts
   This will allow us to learn more about users and provide them with more relevant stories

5. Create shareable story reports
   Static story reports could be shared via social media and email, or downloaded for reading later