Student News Network: new media collaborative platform

Date: Sep-Dec, 2010
Client: Gale Cengage
My Role: UX researcher, interaction designer

Methods: Interviews / Affinity diagram / Cultural probe study / Personas / Prototype / Storyboard
Tools: Illustrator / Photoshop
Website: Student News Netowrk

The Challenge


By working with our client Gale Cengage, our team build a platform for journalism students to share their work and build connection worldwide. However, the challenge is that there are already a lot of platforms that allow students to post and share news and stories. We focusd on creating a new media environment that students can not only share their stories but also learn multi-media techniques.

Process


After defining stakeholders from initial client meeting, we interviewed different groups of people to acquire insight of current trend of journalism. Interviewees includes professional, students in journalism program, journalism, and freelancer. To analyze the huge amount of data, we built an affinity diagram and it is by then we figured out that new techniques and technologies now are becoming one of the necessary skills for journalism student.



We then decided to focus on multi-media as our design idea. Based on the interviews data, we created personas & scenarios to analyze the potential usage of our product.

Applying our primary personas, we built low-fi prototype and did usability testing to improve the platform.


Lo-fi prototype: sketches

Lo-fi prototype: sketches


Result


Interact with Prototype


Hi-fi prototype

Our client like our idea that bringing multi-media aspect into the platform so that not only readers feel fun to explore the content but also the students can learn these skills through posting and sharing. In regard to the usability testing, we found out that people really like the visual and multi-media representation of news. However, they are concerned about the credibility of the news. We recommend that professor and professional get involved this project so that the content can be examined and prove to be highly credible. Visit our prototype.