HOT TAKE

The news is inescapable. It floods our notifications, inboxes and social feeds. Although designed to be trustworthy and informative, it has evolved to an often biased and fear-inducing space. The tension of wanting to be informed while not wanting to be overwhelmed puts many in a dilemma to remain abreast. If the news acted as a concise and impartial guide to developing your own opinion, could this tension be eliminated?

With The Know, the news is now demystified and empowers people to remain informed.

my role

Conceptual Research and Strategy | User Research | Experience Design and Strategy

2020 D&AD ASK

Use the BBC to create a new intersection of physical and data for Gen-Z users (ages 16-23).

PROBLEM

The responsibility to know what’s going on in the world is often outweighed by the action of actually doing so.

The Setup

"

The role of news for young people appears primarily individualistic; it’s about what it can do for them as individuals. Most traditional news brands are still not associated with being useful, interesting or fun.

Reuters Institute, 2019

Now, one basically needs to understand journalistic standards and the basics of professional

fact-checking to really know what kind of information is fake, especially at a glance, the time frame in which social media operates.

WWD, 2019

Having highly accessible news that can be consumed quickly and effectively is important to me.

— Vince, 19

I enjoy news being intertwined with social media. I think it’s just more interesting to see the news in the context of my friends’ lives, and just see who is sharing what posts, and why it’s relevant to them.

— Paisley, 23

"

OPPORTUNITY

Apply the media consumption habits of Gen Z to transform how they consume their news.

WHY BBC?

BBC's mission has centered around providing impartial news and information to help people of all ages understand and engage with the world around them. By delivering fresh approaches and innovative content to best align with Gen Z’s habits, BBC is able to further their mission while positioning themselves as a trusted source to a new generation.

SOLUTION

The Reveal

The Know comes into its own by employing visual storytelling to deliver news that matters to the user. Through the use of image recognition technology, text reading and machine reasoning, the app curates digestible and engaging content that serves the user’s interests.

SHARE FROM ANYWHERE

By using the existing sharing capabilities on their device, users are able to share content to The Know from anywhere including images from their camera roll and posts from social feeds.

Users view a generated story to gain more context about the content they shared. The interactive story is choose your own adventure style and allows the user to interact with the content to dive deeper into the story.

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INTERACTIVE STORY

Users have the opportunity to learn more through the curated stories by exploring branches of related content.

SHARE TO FEED

Once users have made their way through the generated story, a visual summary of the topic and learnings that can be shared back to their network is provided.

Users are given the opportunity to express their sentiments on the content they learned and share it to any platform.

INTERACTIVE DASHBOARD

The Know encourages users to expand their perspective by featuring an interactive dashboard that provides various topics for users to explore. Each topic has their own interactive story delivered as though the topic was initiated by the user.

The topics are arranged in relation to the user icon. The closer the topic reveals its relevance based on the user’s shared content and the larger the size of the topics indicates its popularity. Topics are also categorically separated by color, some including yellow for sports and purple for culture.

The Why

HOW THE KNOW WORKS

The Know creates a closed data loop between

the BBC and its audience.

Through the use of image recognition technology, text reading and machine reasoning, Gen Z users will be further informed by news they can trust about the world around them. The data generated by these users will create a deeper understanding into their behaviors which will help BBC understand what matters to them and how they can best serve them.