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📰 Improving Detik.com Apps News List

OVERVIEW

Detik.com is one of the biggest news platform in Indonesia. I've been getting used to read articles every morning. The article can be about anything including news.
However, when I Detik.com apps, I find it's hard for me to find interesting news. There is no news grouping was my assumption at that time. In this project, I try to redesign the information architecture especially on the Homepage.

Disclaimer: I do not work for Detik.com, nor am I affiliated with. I did this UX case study as I am a product designer who likes to solve problems and to improve my skills.

ROLE

COMPANY

Product Designer

Detik.com

PERIOD

MISSION

Nov 2020

Improve Homepage News List

Problem Assumptions

First, I began with problem assumption about the existing Detik.com apps. These assumption based on my own testing:
‍
- Discovery news on homepage isn’t clear. This problem may affects to other pages after homepage. I think, this resulted in a high bounce rate.

- Too much ads. This is always disturbing everytime I reading by using Detik.com

- Grouping news still confusing. This point belongs to the first point above. There’s no grouping by trending, hot news, etc in the existing apps

Validate Assumptions

Usability Testing

To understand more about the problems, I conduct usability testing to my colleagues. Here is the task:

1. Try to explore news from homepage
2. Find and read news that made they interested

User Interview

After usability test, I do user interview to 35 participants (Offline and Online) from various profession to validate more about the problem, also to find Pain Points, Needs and Goals from every participants. Here is the results:

Here are some key takeaways collected from the interview:

1. Reading time. The average reading time that participants looking for a news is the same as starting from waking up in the morning till before bedtime

2. Need trigger. Mostly participants said that they need a trigger to read a news such as a notification or some trending update

3. News recommendation. All of them said that they need a recommendation because of they’re too lazy to do manual search

4. Bad ads. All of them said, the only one reason they’re lazy to open online news platform is because the ads

5. Available time. On average, they only have 10–20 minutes to read a news every moments (anytime between waking up to the bedtime)

Main Goal

After doing this research stuff I can be sure that the main goal is for users stay up to date on the news by reading everyday. Because some participants don’t want to miss the chat with their colleagues in office. And the main topic mostly the trending topic in Indonesia or any other interesting topic. By revamp Detik.com homepage experience, Hopefully most people triggered to read a trending or recommendation news.

Now I feel confident that the problems are now validated. I also got some feedback from the participants that might be useful for Detik.com apps.

Pain Point 1: The Headline

- Some users want ‘Trending’ news not a ‘Newest’ news. Because the newest isn’t always be a trending news

- Group tab by using hashtag (ex: #CPNS2018) also confusing for some users

-Headline on this day also not really outstanding. Some user scroll up to three times to find the headline on this day. They think the ‘Sandiaga’ news isn’t headline/trending because they are on the ‘Terbaru’ tab

Pain Point 2: News Sectioning

- Ads is really disturbing — all of the participants said that! But, It's the part of business goal so we can denied it.

- As I mentioned at the pain points 1, group tab confusing. The list news is also confusing. There is no sectioning based on curated, recommended, trending, etc

- Difficult to determine the choice of news

Pain Point 3: Trigger & Reading Time

- Most of the participants said they need a trigger to read or know a news

- Some of participants not reading because they have time limit, so they want to know about how long does it take to read every each news

Exploring Ideation

Paper Sketch

Concept Model

Mini Affinity Diagram

Design Results

Solution 1: The Homepage
Pain Point Addressed: Headline & News Sectioning

- Take out the sidebar menu which is redundan in the existing desing

- Added News sectioning and recommendation on Homepage

- Add Trending news because most people care about Trending

- Add reading time

- Put the ‘Tersimpan’ to the footer menu for more exposure

- Change default tab to ‘TOP’ because mostly more care about TOP News such as trending, etc.

- Highlight other favorite category

- Make ads more seemless

. . .

Solution 2: Reminder
Pain Point Addressed: Trigger & Reading Time

- Send a push notification when new trending release

- Create a personal reminder which can be setup as user wish

- Send a push notification to remind that user have a saved news

. . .

Solution 3: Revamp Detail News

- Make architecture information more clear

- Make ads more seemless

- Revamp UI style

Conclusion

Detik.com is a one of the many leading news platform in Indonesia. They have gained a lot of trust which is very good, but it will be more more good if this supported with good experiences.

From my research, 34% people in Indonesia prefer any trending news rather than Newest news. So I think, anything viral will be read a lot. And also it’s important to us as a Product Designer to give a choice to users, give them a good discovery such as curated news, recommendation based on reading history, etc.

Overall the concept is working, but still have a lot opportunity to improve. I just make a little improvement.

. . .

Lesson Learned

It’s always good to practice a design process. I learned that maybe we should give a better choice for users. This is important to build user interest.

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