THE NY TIMES
All the News That Fits Your Schedule
The Project
Not requiring a major overhaul of the existing NYT app, Timely adds a subtle and useful feature to the mobile landing page that will enable the user to read articles at opportune moments throughout a busy day. These moments could include: breakfast, commutes, before a meeting, during a coffee break, kid’s practices or right before bed (good news only at bedtime!).
My Role
As one of three key team members, I was responsible for ideation sketches, user interviews, primary and secondary research, wire-framing flows, story-boarding and designing the visual assets in Sketch that would ultimately be prototyped by my team member. We presented the project successfully to the team over at The New York Times.
PROBLEM
User Retention
CHALLENGE
Build Loyalty
"I’m not very informed about the news. I’m definitely interested, but I think it’s time. I don’t have a designated time besides this morning news email I get. Time management is a major issue."
-Carly, 23
PROCESS
Synthesis
Interview facilitator guide. We spoke with six people about their news consuming habits.
Empathy mapping gave us a glimpse inside the emotional and physical journey of a user when a newsworthy event occurs that they may need to read ASAP.
Synthesizing user interviews collectively allowed us to observe overlapping goals, needs and pain points.
Concept Exploration
Quick-fire concept generation via sketches, descriptions and mini storyboards.
The notion of time as the most precious of commodities became apparent in numerous user interviews. We began considering the relationship between calendars and free time.
We tried versions where you could press a button and toggle between a Google calendar and a NYT calendar view of opportunities to read. Testing showed that no one wanted yet another calendar on top of their existing ones.
Testing also gave us new insight. We realized that free time was really free moments. Even the notion of blocking out 10 minutes to read articles was a big ask. No one has that disposable time. You can almost liken it to the fact that 15% of Music Fans Under 25 Have Never Listened to a Full Album.
In modern life, you need to find small slivers of opportunities to provide content. We had to figure out how to better integrate an awareness of time into the product. Further testing showed that if we shortened the experience time, we would get better retention.
Solution
By connecting to the reader’s Google calendar and also a short onboarding in which the user is asked to specify typical free moments throughout the day (like meal or commute times), Timely intelligently understands the reader’s schedule and adapts with increasing use.
Timely will give personalized access to articles that will be a quick read and be catered to each reader’s interests, habits and schedules.
Audience
People with busy schedules who are interested in quality journalism, who may have small moments throughout the day in order to efficiently catch up on interesting articles from The New York Times.
OUTCOME
Manual Mode
No Google sign-in needed in this mode.
OUTCOME
Auto Mode
Google Calendar sign-in and simple on-boarding helps Timely understand and adapt to the reader’s schedule.
PROCESS
Storyboards
Key moments in which TIMELY can be utilized, building lasting habits and affection for the fine writing of The New York Times.