The Sydney Morning Herald & The Age App

In 2018, as Senior Product Designer and Product Lead for Fairfax Media's Metro Apps, I led the design and development of a lightweight app aimed at giving subscribers quick access to top stories—particularly during time-poor moments like the morning commute. Launching as a suppliment to the The Sydney Morning Herald & The Age Websites, it evolved into a full-featured news experience across iOS and Android.

Employer: Fairfax Media/Nine Entertainment Co.
Role: Senior Product Designer | Product Lead

A news “head-start”

With the opportunity to get something to market that satisfied a lean "catch up" news experience in mind, we started with the hypothesis that news readers wanted to catch up on headlines at key times, regardless of their depth of reading.

The animation which showcases features and benefits doubled as a marketing asset in App stores to support a successful launch. Let's look at the process of getting there, and receiving the "App of the Day" award.

Concepting

To validate the, "news-as-to-dos" idea, I prototyped two testable concepts to use as research stimulus.

1. Inbox, for news: Taking cues from dating apps, it allowed readers to swipe through stories quickly; dismissing, saving, or reading.

2. Inbox, for news: Inspired by email applications, it allowed readers to save, dismiss and preview stories from a scrollable feed.

Insight and refinement

Subscriber interviews revealed a common hesitation: users were reluctant to take actions like "dismiss story" for fear of missing out on related topics. In our swipe-based prototype, many struggled to choose a story to read without first scanning all of the day's top headlines to gauge their interest. More importantly, we learned that "catching up on the news" meant different things to different readers. For some, it centred on "Top Stories," "Local," and "Business." For others, it was "Top," "Local," and "Sport."

This insight led to a new concept: My News — a feature allowing subscribers to customise their experience by selecting and ordering topics that mattered most to them. This became the foundation for version 1 of the app.

Delivery

I was responsible for detailing UX, designing the user interface, adhering to brand and GEL guidelines, and producing detailed specification for development. This included the production of many prototypes to help explain animation requirements for app gestures.

"My News"

The My News tab allows the selection of specific news category to create a bespoke feed.

Headstart app articles, meter, paywall and settings.

Subscribing

The subscription policies required careful consideration about ariticle meterring, paywalls and account settings.

Expanding the experience

While the Headstart app satisfied catch-up news needs (and was featured as the App Store's App of The Day soon after release), it didn't satisfy all news needs. There was more opportunity to increase subscriptions. Unmet reader needs included the ability to deep-dive into all topics, access popular print-only insert content, and access the puzzles available in the older iPad version and printed newspaper. The puzzle functionality was also crucial to decommission and migrate the existing premium subscriber base from the older app.

Understanding reading sequence

Building on Version 1, we explored how to expand the app’s content and utility. It was clear the experience needed to be device-agnostic, with full content and features consistent across platforms. Less obvious was how to sequence the user flow once additional content like games and media were introduced.

Through prototype testing and subscriber interviews, we uncovered a clear reading pattern:

Start with what the newsroom highlights.
Dive into my own topics of interest.
Finish with "once-a-day" content like crosswords or podcasts.

This insight shaped the three-tab structure: Top Stories, My News, and More—the latter housing peripheral content for premium subscribers. Like so...

Designing the experience

I was responsible for detailing the UX, and designing UI for the full fledged experience. Adhering to brand, and GEL guidelines, I producing detailed specification for development, which included mock animation requirements for app gestures.

News feeds

News section pages leveraged tablet screen real-estate to offer more visual heirarcy to enable newsroom highlighting.

Article screen

The tablet view allowed for more layout options for different article sections, offering a more aesthetically aligned experience with the web experience.

Premium upgrate

The extension of the head-start app included the addition of the premium tier, which included key add-ons, such as puzzles, and Today's Paper.

Puzzles

Completing the day's puzzles was discovered to be an important ritual for news-enthusiats. Thus, rather tha group by puzzle, a daily grouping of all the day's puzzles-like you would see in a printed newspaper-was created.

Crosswords

The crosswords, which included the work of puzzle makers like David Astle, was an important ritual for news-readers, and a key premium feature.

Sudoku

Like crosswords, Sudoku puzzles had become a popular daily activity for enthusiast, another key premium feature.

Today's Paper

A popular reading mode among high-value subscribers, and key to unlocking the migration to the new iOS version, the interactive version of the printed version of the paper was improved.