Bring a team, create a prototype, and you may win a free trip to Barcelona for a global competition!
THEME “The future of news curation. At scale*.”
* for all categories we should be thinking “How might we do this at scale?”
Categories:
1. Explain the News.
Prototype a News experience that provides users with the “back story”: explainers, key information, archive content, “why this is in the News”, etc. Look for connections, content and design devices that address a varying knowledge of key concepts in each story.
Tips : The “Stream” is currently a popular format with News providers – how might we look beyond this at the future of how we keep users up to date whilst explaining the news?
Audience insight : It’s important to remember that most people don’t follow the news all-day every-day. This means that they sometimes feel like they’ve come to a story partway through, and they’re struggling to understand what’s going on. This is particularly common with long-running stories like the unrest in Syria or the debate over fracking. With these kinds of subjects, people often express a desire for a brief summary of the story so far, to allow them to get up to date and then following ongoing developments. If they can’t understand the background to a story, it can seem confusing and irrelevant, and they might try to filter it out entirely.
2. Connect the News.
Prototype a News experience that provides serendipitous, surprising and relevant journeys across the News, and one that encourages discovery and sharing.
Tips : Look for ways to pique audience interests, to tap into social media habits, and support consumption across devices.
Audience Insight : We’re all accustomed to having a huge quantity of information at our fingertips, and this has given many of us a voracious appetite for new information. One of the reasons people enjoy using social media sites is that they allow them to discover content they wouldn’t otherwise have seen, be that funny, shocking or thought-provoking. Some users also turn to aggregator apps which offer content from a range of different sources, curated in a range of different ways, to try and give them the feeling “There’s always something interesting to read/ watch here.”
3. Theme the News.
Prototype a novel approach to “story type” groupings. Linked data topics are useful and well understood, so how might we use “Story types” to group stories and provide further personalisation capability?
Tips : For example, there are possibilities in sentiment-driven, or “narrative type” groupings – e.g. “about unlikely heroines”, “with famous victims”, “with humourous elements” – that we could use in combination with Topics.
Audience Insight : When we ask people which types of news they’re interested in, they often find it difficult to answer that question, because they don’t classify news in the same way news organisations classify news. For example, news organisations might group together all the articles around a specific place, like Portugal, but users might be interested in some stories about Portugal (like the disappearance of Madeleine McCann) and not in others (like stories about the Portuguese economy). Some audiences also express a desire for news that makes them feel a certain way, e.g. uplifting stories, or funny stories.
4. Tools for Journalists.
Prototype a tool that allow Journalists to spend more time creating and curating, and less time digging and filing.
Tips : Think “How might automated processes do more of the heavy lifting?”; “How might automated processes provide the most relevant raw materials for the Journalist to craft the News stories?”
Audience Insight : There will be a good number of Journalists at the event – a few roaming experts, plus 1 or more in each team – grab them for some guerilla testing!