The following project is an article, published on Medium, realised by a group of students at Federico II University of Naples and there is no affiliation with la Repubblica or associated publishing groups. Article
Skills: Redesign, Designer research, UX/UI Designer
Tools: Sketch, Illustrator, Principle
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la Repubblica is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper founded in 1976 in Rome. According to total circulation and quantity of readers, it is considered the second most important newspaper in Italy, after “il Corriere della Sera”.
The phenomenon of digitization have involved different sectors, in particular the editorial one, thus changing our lifestyle and our reading habits. In the past, for the world of mass communications, the attention was completely turned to the newspaper and the paper book, in its structure and its layout in order to make the information more pleasant and user-friendly as possible. Why? Because these were the main “products” to which the user referred to inform themselves. But with the first mentioned advent of digitization these contents change shape. The classic newspaper is replaced by the website, by the newspaper in digital format or by the news application.
So, users’ habits to access this content change! The focus shifts to the digital content and every publishing house has had to update itself in these terms.
This is the origin of the following research, which led us to analyze how the different Italian publishing companies have dealt with this process. This research allowed us to focus our attention on la Repubblica and its app.
With all of this features it is easy for the reader to become disoriented. As Scott Belsky, Adobe’s Chief Product Officer says:
“Rule of thumb for UX: More options, more problems.”
Before going into the redesign phase we’ve been through a deep analysis to better understand how to improve the entire user experience of the application to the reader. General research, Guerilla usability testing and App store review research.
For redesigning la Repubblica app we decided to involved a group of 15 people, not necessarily habitual users, and collected their feedbacks. To test the usability, we used the Guerrilla Usability Testing: a quick and cheap way of testing a prototype or a website with real users.
Since we wanted to have a complete overview, we considered some of the most critical App Store reviews for the past moths. Users noted that they were frustrated for: Low text style legibility, Picture positions not well aligned to the referred text, Slow news updates. Redundant news and Inability to comment under articles.
By analyzing the results from the initial study, we decided to implement a button for the search among the published news.
The newsfeed now presents a more simplified structure in order to enhance app navigation and content legibility. In fact, the feed is now composed only by two different formats of news: main news and related news.
La Repubblica is a well-known newspaper thanks to its authors and its up-to-date investigative reports. The premium section, named “R:”, has a daily edition and represents one of the main feature in the publishing strategy of the newspaper. This section, where the users can find articles and comments on the main stories of the day, stands out already in the original app due to a dedicated “facade” and a more refined design; what should be redesigned, instead, is the integration with all the other (free) contents.
Try to imagine a user who, pushed by his/her thirst for knowledge, stumbles into a premium article about a topic he wishes to dig deeper into, thus he could start to consider to try the free trail (and yes, this would involve the use of a paywall).
The user can select between different tabs to access the four sections of the app: feed, video content, saved elements and personal profile with all the technical info and the settings.
Being a news app designed to be used (mostly) when you are on the go, we think a lot about the reading experience itself. The original app shows an article view which is very static, kind of replicating the mobile version of the website. In our proposal we have instead preferred a full-screen view, using a toolbar for the main interactions; we have been driven by the desire of offering a more transparent and immediate reading experience, reducing all the distractions.Speaking about the main sources of inspirations for the new reading mode, instead of the traditional news apps we considered services like Medium and Pocket, which already offer enhanced features for improved readability such as full screen view, text size and brightness control.
In a nutshell, the following are the main features we have proposed in our solution:
Final remarks
Following the introduction, the focus of the editorial world is increasingly shifting on the digital one because this is a fertile and ever-expanding market that cannot be avoided. The applications play a key role and must not be confined to offer content that totally or in part reflect those already shows on the relative website or on the paper.
A news app must have its own identity and must be designed to put the users at the hearts. For this, our primary goal, was to redesign La Repubblica app and simplify it to give more emphasis to the contents, users needs and use.
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