Periodical
For the empowered news consumer who wants to do more than just read news.
UX/UI Design, Design Research and Visual Identity
Instructor: Thomas Ham
Team: Sami Everhart, Melissa Takai,
Shelley Tsui and Stephanie Tang Waldrop
Duration: 10 Weeks
Periodical is an interactive news platform that empowers news consumers in their local communities.
I worked with my team to research and discover an opportunity space at the intersection of news + activism. This digital platform gives readers a way to make a difference with a robust program for community engagement.
How might we help people to help others by revitalising traditional news to empower?
PROBLEM
Reading the news and staying informed can often have the negative side effect of feeling a strong sense of powerlessness and despair. Our team wanted to explore potential opportunities for users to stay informed while maintaining an optimistic perspective and a sense of agency in the world.
SOLUTION
Do more than just read the news. Periodical is an imagined platform that provides digestible news through various mediums in addition to connecting users with actionable causes to engage and empower them to be active within their local communities.
EXPLORATION
When we first began our research, we spent a fair amount of time looking at competitors.
Due to our desire to look at the intersection of news and community, we looked to the NYT, Humans of New York, as well as Great Big Story.
WORKSHOPS
After presenting our competitors to our fellow classmates and highlighting areas of success and areas of improvement that we identified, we conducted workshops in order to gather more information about what they felt was missing.
One insight that inspired us was the lack of call to action that currently exists within the industry. After being informed, users weren't sure how to act (if there was even a way to act) on that new information.
“News in a place of community building is important; we are not just individuals but communities and can form solidarity.”
Final
INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING
Periodical offers featured interactive stories through the home page to maintain reader engagement and encourage them to learn more.
CONNECTING WITH COMMUNITIES
Doing our best to maintain the sense of community through, various sections of the layout are dedicated to user-created opportunities to help nearby.
ACTION KITS
In addition to helping people stay informed, we came up with the concept of "action kits" — kits that provide items to help people be the best activists they can be while donating proceeds to the organisations they care about.
