Case Study: No More Spamming!

A UX Research & Design project aimed at improving the news consumptions experience by understanding the user’s behavioural journey in terms of content relevancy and irrelevant spam notifications.| UX Hackathon Case Study

Overview

I recently participated in a UX Hackathon where I had to work in a team of 7 members, choose a problem statement, solve it using the design thinking process and finally present it to the organizers. All this in 48 hours!

Problem Statement

There are multiple news-sharing apps used by a single user and are often spammed with notifications. There is also a lot of fake news which gets shared. A news-sharing app wants to help users find relevant and important news easily every day and also understand explicitly that the news is not fake but from proper sources.

Why we chose this problem?

We as a team wanted a problem that would challenge us and make us push our limits. We actually discussed a lot and even tually decided to ahead with this be because of the following reasons.

Personally, I had previously never seen a UX case study done on this topic and really felt like this is a good industry to solve for since it actually caters to a wide range of people (culturally, economically and socially).

• Due to changes brought about by the pandemic, people started depending on the news a lot to get updates about the situation around them. We really thought that this change in behavior would be very interesting to study.
• We also felt that news apps are used by a lot of people but it feels like a space that hasn’t been explored much and has a lot of potential scope of betterment.
• As a team, we realized that we have different skillsets and felt that we would all be able to cater to this problem statement in a very strategic and collaborative manner. Plus it was interesting to see how all of us had a very different take on news consumption.

What did I do?

Even though I contributed throughout, there were some places where I had given more of my effort and time. I contributed the most around assumptions & hypotheses, secondary and primary research, analysing research data and creating a user journey to understand the pain points and further formulate our HMWs. I was always part of the constant team discussions happening over Ideation, brainstorming, blockers, reviews, etc., and gave my constructive feedback and opinions all the way through.

Plan of Action and Roles

After we selected our problem, I initiated the plan of action for the team for this hackathon. This was done both to order our process and to save time by having different people take up different tasks.

Further, we allotted roles while keeping in mind each of the team members had their own strengths, we allocated tasks that we could each give our best shots, and then we set approximate timelines to keep ourselves in check and make sure things are done in an orderly manner.

It was quite interesting to see how our tentative plan kept changing, we decided to finish it all by 9pm (joke of the century). Our entire timeline got pushed by 12 hours if not more lol.

Assumptions and Hypothesis

Since our problem had so many subparts we decided to break it down to make it easier to refer to it whenever needed

Assumptions

The first thing we did after understanding the problem statement was to put all our minds together and start jotting down everything that we thought could be true about users and the product. This helped us explore our problem statement in different aspects and give us a baseline understanding of how we might tackle the problems.

Assumptions about the users

We collaboratively decided which of these are the most important and relevant to our subproblems and then noted them down seperately.

• Spamming of messages usually leads to clearing of the content without viewing thus probably leading the user to lose access to important information.
• Too many notifications irritate the users and it clutters the bar on their phone
• Irrelevant news makes the user stop viewing the news thus losing access to credible news
• Users don’t want to spend time reading the entire content. They need short and crisp news
• Using multiple apps because users are not getting the content categories they want in one app.
• The user doesn’t want to waste time figuring out the relevance of the news
• Young people don’t read news from apps, usually depend on social media to get updated
• Users sometimes get overwhelmed by too many categories
• Users only check their phones and go through these notifications when they are free or during a particular time of the day when they are doing time pass
• One app not accommodating both the regional and international news might create a requirement for different apps

Assumptions about the Business

• News apps are trying to be like social media apps
• Businesses have to publish irrelevant news because younger generations prefer news with more fun instead of reliable news.
• News apps want to increase the time that user spends on their app so that they can show ads and generate revenue
• in order to increase the user screen time, news apps make users encounter eye-catching news rather than credible ones
• Assuming that this business started booming more during the pandemic
• Apps generate income through subscriptions.

Hypothesis

After brainstorming over our assumptions for some time, we came up with a few hypothesis statements that listed possible solutions to the problems we could derive from our assumptions. We would, however, need to validate these later in our secondary and primary research.

Again, we discussed these and decided to note down the ones that were most relevant to our subproblems.

• The app should ask the user initially, what categories are they interested to read from. And, show 8 out of every 10 news related to that category only (assuming that users get overwhelmed by too much info)
• Giving filters for notifications (in terms of content category and also frequency) because assuming that users get irritated by too many filters
• An App that includes all international and regional news that can be customizable depending on the users’ needs, will reduce the number of apps (assuming that people use more than 1 app)
• The app should provide info about all the trusted worldwide sources, and then in each article, it should mention which source has validated this news, as I’m assuming that users can’t differentiate between real and fake news
• An app allowing the user to choose/customize the time for notification popup for news (assuming that people only check news notifications during free time)
• Users don’t want to spend time reading the entire content. They need short and crisp news

Secondary Research

We split the work among team members and went through various sources on the internet to get more insights. It helped us to validate our hypotheses and find out if we were going in the right direction before reaching out to the users.

I went through various sources on the internet like industry reports, academic articles, analytics/business data on the internet to get statistical and behavioural insights.

Main Insights

• The most common age group using the news app was 35yrs+ and age group 24–34 (39% and 33% respectively)
• 52% of people feel that push notifications are an annoying distraction and 26% think it’s beneficial if they alert about things they are interested in while 20% think it’s productivity-enhancing.
• As the frequency of news exposure increases, people gradually perceive news overload, which can lead them to shut down cognitively and deny the necessity of news consumption or to put less effort into acquiring news
• Older adults are more likely to rely on television, radio, and print media for their news than are those in the youngest adult cohort, who are more likely to use mobile devices.

Some topics that we realized we had assumed differently

We had assumed that older people probably use more digital news apps because they are not that much into social media, but we didn’t take into account

Few points that got validated in Secondary Research itself

Sources: Link 1 | Link 2 | Link 3 | Link 4 | Link 5

Primary Research

Once we had a better idea of the grounds we were covering, it was about time we reached out to the “real users”. To get the best insights, we scoped down our target users based on what we found from desk research.

Initially we wanted to send a screener form to recruit users for the interview but in the interest of time, we discussed and agreed to skip this step and directly proceeded to user interviews of those(mutual friends) who we know to fit the target group.

We missed a few points during secondary research, so we wanted to make sure that we follow some of these points for primary research. The questionnaire should have questions related to these.

• Multiple Apps
• Overwhelming because of too much info
• More data is required about behaviour around notification and ads
• Are people able to differentiate between real and fake
• When does the user check notifications
• Behaviour concerning digital news
• Are users willing to pay to get news
• Does the user like consuming regional/international news

We went ahead and conducted a 1:1 interview with 7 users over a virtual setup. We got a lot of information from the 7 users whom we chose to interview.

We got quite overwhelmed with all this information and hence decided to segregate it based on some of the major sub-problems such as notification, relevant/irrelevant content, etc.

Important Insights

• Users mentioned that the timing of when the notification comes often determines whether the user will click on it (or even pay attention to notification), as users often feel that notification distracts them from their work/important activities.
• A lot of the users had even disabled the notifications because they felt like their entire notification drop-down gets filled with it which makes it difficult for them to view other important notifications.
• Users who care about whether the news they are receiving is verified, often go to google to check and see whether other trusted sites also confirm this news.
• Users that specifically read a lot prefer to have different apps for different topics such as business, finance, politics, etc.
• Users also mentioned that they want to be able to understand the crux of the article very easily without putting in too much time and energy.

Validation of Hypothesis

Analysis of Data

To make it easier for us, we divided our users into two user sets. At this time we were also considering taking the path of creating empathy maps and personas. But then we realised that it would be better and more time friendly to create a user flow and map out everything there itself

User Journey Mapping

We started with trying to create a common flow for both users sets. We were feeling extremely overwhelmed because of all the data we had collected and decided to go back to the beginning of our research point, the sub-problems. We made sure that the flow caters to the sub-problems while taking into account all the validated assumptions.

Then we went ahead and mapped out the entire flow keeping in mind the emotional quotient of the user so that we could come up with relevant insights, followed by solutions for each phase of the journey.

How Might We Questions

We formulated these with respect to the assumptions etc that got validated. We just wanted to have these questions so that we could constantly come back and refer to them while Ideation.

1. The spamming of notifications from the news apps tend to irritate and lower the overall experience of the user
   How might we ensure that there is a controlled flow of relevant notifications from the app?
2. The user feels the need to check for the credibility of news and validate it. This additional effort results in user dissatisfaction.
   How might we provide the user with a confirmation that the news is verified and validated?
3. The burdening of irrelevant content on the users leads to them shying away from the news and the app
   How might we understand and provide the users with relevant content?
4. The user uses multiple apps to gather news, thus leading to the crowding of notifications and mix-up of content.
   How might we try to provide a platform to the user that abolishes the requirement of multiple apps to fulfill their requirements?
5. How might we try to provide a platform to the user that abolishes the requirement of multiple apps to fulfill their requirements?
   How might we provide the user with crisp and short content as per the user’s requirement?

Ideation and Brainstorming

NOTE: Final ideas have been highlighted after looking at the user flow again

How might we ensure that there is a controlled flow of relevant notifications from the app?

1. While the user signs up, ask for which categories they’ll like to view the news on? And only push notifications regarding those categories. Also, use this category to show relevant news. Show 8 out of 10 new related to the selected category only. And, an option to edit the preferences.
2. Ask the user to set up Do Not Disturb Time. During this time, do not push any notifications to the user.
3. Providing customizable options to the user in order to select the time and frequency of notifications required.
4. Allowing the user to customize the topics for which he requires to receive notifications
5. By continuously taking the feedback from the users regarding the notifications are they creating any disturbance or showing the relevant content for the customer.

How might we provide the user with a confirmation that the news is verified and validated?

1. Show a Verified Badge against the news, which means the news has been verified by the app
2. The app interface should start with verification is done some blue tick mark that can make the viewers more confident in what they read from the app.
3. Providing the details of the source from which the news has been collected and also a reliable source to compare it with.
4. Allow the user to select from what sources he wants to get the news from (India TV, TOI, etc.)
5. Adding the credibility score of each news website from which the article has been taken beside the source name
6. Create a Like and Dislike feature in the app. Whenever a user finds the news is credible, he can drop alike. So, when some other user is looking at the news, by looking at the counts of likes, he can get confidence that the news that he’s about to read can be a good one.

How might we understand and provide the users with relevant content?

1. Implementing a like feature where the news or topics that are liked by the user will be shown at a maximum quantity
2. Using search filters (categories and tags) to provide the news required by the user.
3. Implementing an algorithm to understand the recent items and searched done by the user, thus creating a UI that shall present the user with the news as per his mood and requirement.
4. Clear visual distinction between news and ads

How might we try to provide a platform to the user that abolishes the requirement of multiple apps to fulfill their requirements?

1. By making sure that the news will be in every language and covers the national and international news well.
2. Providing the user with options to toggle between regional and international news as per convenience

How might we provide the user with crisp and short content as per the user’s requirement?

1. We need to ask the user to fill a form, there the interests of the user will be collected based on the user’s interest the user will receive or see the content.
2. Provide a short context/summary of the news article against the news headline in order to provide the user with a better insight
3. Users should be provided with 2 modes, short with main points, full script.

Wireframing

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/mobile-app-onboarding/ In particular, visual-design customization, doesn’t belong in onboarding. It’s hard for people to know how they will prefer the app to look before actually using it or why a certain visual design may be better than other. (Also, in general, a lot of research shows that people usually stick with defaults.)

HIGH FIDELITY WIRE-FRAMES

A good few hours were put into discussions relating to the methods of alerting the user for the personalization options. In the UI stage, we came to the conclusion of using a popup and a banner. An edit option was decided to be included on the settings page.

Inspiration UI

UI Iterations

Final UI Solutions

NOTE: The base app we chose is In-shorts

User flow 1

User flow 2

Screens

In order to align our solutions with our Problem statement, we made edits onto a few major screens namely

News Feed | Notifications | Categories | Home screen and Settings

News Feed

Provide a way for the users to receive relevant content and verify if the news articles are credible and worth believing in

Source verification and like metric.

The source of the article is mentioned at the bottom indicating that it is from a credible and tested source. The metric between the total number of users that have viewed the article and the ones that have liked it indicates whether this article is worth reading

Problem Solved

• This solves the problem of the user having to reach out to other sources or to the Internet to verify/double-check if the news was real or fake that administers extra efforts on the user’s part and also demolishes the main intent of the news app to provide a single-stop credible news platform and also causes irritation to the user.
• The “like metric” solves the problem of the user not understanding whether it is worth spending his energy and time on this article. Also, it helps the user indicates that it is credible information.

Prioritizing Relevant Content

The menu icon provides a wide range of options that enables the user to restrict the content from any irrelevant categories or sources. Thus ensuring that the User receives only the content that interests him.

Problem solved

The users often feel irritated if they come across content that is not relevant to their context, this helps them hide stories from a particular topic/source. This solves the problem of irrelevant content.

Notifications

Ensure that the user is not overwhelmed by notifications and receives a better experience for accepting them

Reducing Notification spamming

The Customizable timing option provides the user to choose when he is available to go through the notifications for the day, ensuring that the regular news updates do not cause any disturbance to the user. Choosing either the ‘Whole Day’ or a particular start and end time would enable both the app and the user to work in a better understandable environment.

Problem Solved

Users are usually overwhelmed by the regular news updates, especially if received during busy hours. Regular updates at unequal intervals of time by multiple apps tend to disturb and also spam the user’s notifications bar thus causing him to feel annoyed and clearing which makes him miss out on relevant updates from other apps too.

This solves this problem by allowing the user to decide when he can receive articles. This way he will at least be more inclined to read the article and the irritating from spamming will be relieved.

Sources

Enable the user to choose the sources from which he desires to receive the news. Ensuring that the user feels safe and also has a relevant flow of content.

Making sure content is from credible user trusted sources

The ability to choose the sources from which the user can receive the news content ensures that he is comfortable with the news he encounters. With a feature enabled for the user to understand the credibility of news apps they can always go back to the settings screen to change their interests.

Problem Solved

This solves the problem of the user having to reach out to other sources or to the Internet to verify/double-check if the news was real or fake that administers extra efforts on the user’s part and also demolishes the main intent of the news app to provide a single-stop credible news platform and also causes irritation to the user.

Categories

Provide the user with relevant information that is required by him based on his interests

Ensuring relevant information flow

The user is provided an option to select the categories from which he would like to receive news, thus ensuring that no extra content flow takes place. The categories can be updated in the settings depending on the interests of the user.

Problem Solved

Since the user gets a lot of content (also in terms of notifications) this solves that problem by allowing the user to narrow down the topics that he is interested in. This way the app does not bombard the user with unnecessary information. This is also more likely to retain the user onto the app as the user will experience lesser negative emotions like feeling overwhelmed and agitated.

Home Screen and Settings

Ensure that the user is educated about the new feature provided by the app with timely notifications at the times the user is in crisis

We realize that we cannot introduce all of the above-mentioned features in onboarding thus in order to push the users to select the features or use them whenever the mentioned issues are encountered a banner is provided for the first-time users post the new upgrade.

Helping the user to understand the new feature with customized banners ensures to help the user reach out to activate the feature easily.

Source: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/mobile-app-onboarding/

In particular, visual-design customization doesn’t belong in onboarding. It’s hard for people to know how they will prefer the app to look before actually using it or why a certain visual design may be better than others. (Also, in general, a lot of research shows that people usually stick with defaults.)

Users tend to skip the onboarding as they have no prior experience with the app and wouldn’t have the understanding to provide a response to the questions asked. Thus providing the users access to go through the news app and experience the different screens and features before prompting them to personalize their experience would provide the users with a much better understanding and help to make better decisions.

Not wanting to overwhelm the user with pop-ups and notifications at the beginning of his journey, we entertained the idea of only providing popups after the user has gone through a minimum number of articles in the apps

The user if he chooses to skip, along with another prompt after a 7-day interval, thus ensuring that the user is not overwhelmed with request popups and has sufficient time to go through the screen.

Confirming to personalize the user content would proceed to redirect the user to a series of 3 screens that shall provide feature customization.

“Post providing the information required by the user for his new content personalization the banner and pop up would be forever disabled”

Major takeaways from this project

I absolutely loved working with my teammates, we were put together randomly but we fit like perfect puzzle pieces!

• This case study helped develop valuable team-building skills
• We were reminded of the importance of time management by having to complete it in less than 48 hours
• We understood the need to disagree and commit
• We also learned the importance of changing our approach depending on the situation and taking important decisions at the right time.