The Sky News App
Create a first class mobile service with visual storytelling at its heart.
App Overview
Vision
Create a first class mobile service with visual storytelling at it’s heart. Pioneer new ways to tell stories visually that others follow.
Principles
Beauty, intelligence and simplicity.
Clear & consistent editorial focus.
Equal focus to TV.
Proposition
High quality journalism.
Live breaking news & events.
Engaging visual story telling.
Discussion, debate & opinion.
Clear & accessible analysis.
Audience & Ideas
Personas
To understand our users, five personas were created for key target news consumers. These prioritised free time and commuter consumption.
• Emily | News Lover - Free time
• Jessica | Casual Reader - Free time
• Seb | Daily Reader - Free time
• Sharon | Daily Briefer - Commuter
• Stuart | News Lover - Commuter
Initial Ideas
We held group brainstorms and individual concept sketching to establish a mix of initial concepts.
• Timeline
• Visual storytelling
• Personalisation
• Social
• Widget
• Time boxed content
• News Digest
• Actionable notifications
Idea refinement
Group Hack Day
We took the initial early concepts and hacked to create two fuller concepts and a list of prioritised ideas.
• Two personas (Sharon, Stuart)
• Two scenarios (around the Nepal Earthquake)
• Two teams
• 5 minutes to sketch ideas
• 3 minutes to pitch
• 2 minutes of critiquing
Editorial Workshop
Sky News editors evaluated & contributed to the hack concepts
• Reusability of existing formats
• Data insight baked in
• Include new video formats
• Mixed content formats
• Somplicity
Concept One: Now
For light readers looking to snack on up-to-the-minute information, Now provides a feed of breaking events and commentary as it happens.
Concept Two: Story Hub
For news junkies looking to immerse themselves in todays headlines, Story Hub serves as the gateway to engaging deep coverage news content.
Concept Three: Inbox
Easy to use inbox with morning and afternoon bulletins. Reading and removing personalises preferences.
Concept Four: Enhanced Top Stories & Digest
An enhanced Top Stories news feed including Live Blog and the Daily Digest, a beautiful, distraction-free mobile reading experience recapping five headline stories from the last 24 hours.
Testing
Conclusion
We tested the Now & Top Stories concepts as they were well received from team, editors and stakeholders.
In testing, the Top Stories design was perceived to provide a greater depth of coverage and was seen as a simpler concept for instant news consumption.
We continued with the Top Stories design into build, including the downloadable News Digest as a useful way to get the news-at-a-glance. Some of the ‘Now’ ideas were taken into the Live Blog work later on. The overall Top Stories design persists today, visually updated with the Polaris design system styling which I discuss in the Sky.com case study. Today’s Sky News mobile app receives a 4.6 star rating in the App Store and is #6 in the News category.
