Aggregator for politically balanced news

In Brief

SmartNews is a machine learning news aggregation app that works to pop users’ “filter bubbles” through its “News From All Sides” feature, which allows its users to access news from across a range of political perspectives.

Role

With the team at FutureDraft we worked on user research and explorations of new UX/UI design for the app’s discovery and onboarding experiences.

Strategy

As part of a rollout of new features, the team at FutureDraft was engaged to consult on new approaches to Onboarding and News Feed content delivery.

We explored different ideas on how to achieve more engagement as well as highlight the personalization that machine learning can provide for a more curated experience.

Process

We explored over 20 layout combinations for the news feed. Our goal was to capitalize on their machine learning algorithm to serve users a customized feed, relevant to their tastes and preferences; while keeping performance light.

Personalized Newsfeed

Personalized discovery is at the heart of the SmartNews experience. Articles and sources are curated using users' location, and activity.

With a dense amount of information to present, we explored several ideas to make the news feed easy to navigate while also surfacing the available customization options.

Features

With political balance and diverse points of view as the drivers for SmartNews’ algorithms, we focused on the “News from all Sides” feature as well as having options for the user to curate their content preferences in a manner that felt intuitive and didn't cause any friction.