Humanizing the news that runs our world through open-voice data
In the year 2020, people across the world have not been able to stop and breathe for a moment. People near and far are sharing collective experiences of grief, fear, hopelessness, and more.
A challenge was provided by Corona Diaries, a joint venture by academics in tech and journalism that documents the pandemic through personal stories around the world — big and small. As the project obtained more stories, the team wanted to begin looking at ways to innovate the product through the use of open voice data.
The business goal was to make getting granular and high-level insights around global events easy, whether for artists, students, historians, or journalists. To solve this problem, I designed Pulse to humanize the news that runs our world. Pulse is an audio timeline for global citizens to share and listen to interesting stories from regular people — like the audio version of Chicken Soup for the Soul. Everyone can curate their own flavor.
Research and Methodology
My research objective was to learn about how people express themselves, document thoughts and memories, and consume news online. These topics helped me frame an understanding for (a) what would make people use the app more often? and (b) what would bring more people to use the app?
I interviewed 5 men and 5 women, aged 23–42 currently living on the East Coast of the United States.
As I sought to uncover trends about how people express themselves and information about how people have adjusted to life during the pandemic, I interviewed 5 men and 5 women, aged 23–42 living on the East Coast of the United States. Questions included:
How do you express yourself online?
How do you consume news online?
How do you find out what’s going on in your community/country?
What does life in a pandemic look like for you?
What has been your emotional journey from January until now?
Who do you talk to about the pandemic?
Synthesis and Hypothesis
“There’s been a lot of trauma so I’m looking at the world a lot more closely.”
Synthesis
Key pain points emerged around patterns and themes in users’ emotions and behaviors: (a) trust/credibility of news sources, (b) media consumption habits, (c ) news preferences, and (d) community.
To synthesize research from user interviews, I created an affinity map.
Through research, I learned that the pandemic has heightened users’ emotional connection to news stories.
5 out of 10 interviewees are more open to sharing stories with likeminded people
7 out of 10 interviewees learn about and share news stories through word of mouth
10 out of 10 interviewees are currently solving the problem by using 2 or more sources including apps, subscription services, friends/family
After mapping, I grew empathy for people living through a pandemic in an age of advanced technology with a distrust for the media that run our lives.
The problem trend was the anxiety and/or skepticism of news in the pandemic. For that reason, the ideation stage centered around one question:
How might we build a trustworthy, minimal product that gives users a more affirming news experience?
We believed that by providing adults with a personalized, informative experience that amplifies voices from the people on the ground, we could start to humanize the daily news cycle and relieve heightened skepticism and anxiety of the media.
Ideation & Iteration
User Flows
I started developing the user flows for two key features:
Sign-in process to allow users to privately store recordings and have a visual identity
Audio timeline to allow users to find audio data using date, location, keyword, and source filters
Sketches
Feedback from early wire flows revealed gaps in our thinking.
Feedback: “Didn’t know what the search function was for…”
Implemented onboarding page and better iconography
Feedback: Do I have to search by a specific location or can the location be anywhere?
Implemented “Search By” function to allow search by country, state, or city
Feedback: I like the speech bubbles, but I wasn’t sure why they led to the Pulse page.
Pivoted speech bubbles to clean, sleek design for intuitive flow on the search results screen
Initial wire flow sketches
Paper Prototype
Screens in order: Onboarding, Location Selector, Date Selector, Search Results, Timeline View, Play Timeline
Solution
The design solution featured four key elements on the app to help users personalize and humanize local, regional, and global stories.
TIMELINE: Robust search function with filters by date, location, keywords, and verification
ACCOUNT: Sign-in, privately store recordings, follow topics/ppl
RECORD: Record stories, keyword tagging, private/public upload
EXPLORE: Allows you to browse relevant news stories using map
Conclusion
In the midst of a pandemic, it’s hard to feel like there’s any hope for tomorrow. When a Black man pleading the very words “I can’t breathe” can be murdered on camera, it’s hard to feel like our lives, our stories, our voices matter. One might ask be asking themselves the following questions more often this year: How do we amplify our collective voices worldwide? How do we bring value to the voices that have gone silent in the oversaturation of skewed news? How do we tune out the news and tap into our own truths?
As we head into the unforeseeable future, the Pulse app has the potential to become a normal tool in our daily news consumption routines. To maximize its potential, I have suggested the following next steps in the iteration process:
Implement account verification process to allow users to become verified sources if they’re journalists, researchers, etc.
Implement time capsule feature that reminds users of past memories during important moments
Implement social sharing feature that allows users to share and embed any audio clip in another app/website