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Transforming the everyday news consumption habits of young people to broaden their worldview
Client
BBC
Industry
Broadcasting
Duration
5 weeks (2019)
Areas of responsibility
Desk research & interviews, System analysis, Design strategy, UI design, Workshop facilitation, Prototyping
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The Story

A particular challenge for the BBC at the moment is competing for the attention of younger people aged 16 – 34. There has been a noticeable drop-off in the size of this audience over the last few years. The BBC knows that its connection to this group is vital for the future.


My team was asked to design a public service to provide new forms of value that are outside the remit of commercial operators that will both fulfil the BBC’s public service mission and gain the attention of audiences.

The Solution
BBSee transforms the news consumption habits of young people with an embedded plugin on their phone which is compatible with news and social media applications.
The service can cultivate critical thinking among young people, let more of their voices heard through various platforms and strengthen the social connection with people who have different views to their own.
My team needed to finish the project in 5 weeks so we only spent the first 2 weeks to conduct desk research and interviews with people aged 16-34. We discovered that most of the young people do not use BBC News as the main media to consume news, but we believe the potential to gain the attention of the young audience back is huge, given their proficiency in delivering high-quality news and strong legacy of public trust. We then examined the news consumption routine of the target group, different ways to consume news, the value of news and trends and competitors in the market.
01 Research
Discovery
02 Analysis
Key Insights
1. A large portion of young people consumes news on social media as part of their daily routine. 
2. Fake news stories can be spread very quickly on social media and most of them are not easy to spot.
3. Isolating in the filter bubble of news is a common phenomenon in which an internet user encounters only information and opinions that match with their own beliefs, caused by data collection that personalize an individual’s online experience.
4. Young people tend to discuss news stories only with like-minded people.
How might we transform the news consumption habits of young people to help them broaden their worldview and strengthen BBC’s position in its industry?
03 Ideation
Service Proposition
BBSee transforms the news consumption habits of young people with an embedded plugin on their phone which is compatible with news and social media applications. 
 
The service helps users establish a holistic understanding of the news topic from different perspectives, provides fact-checking service to make people aware of fake news content with reminders and explanations of false information and suggests physical news-related activities for users to have interesting interactions with people who have different views to their own.

Understanding news from

multiple perspectives

Fact-checking

Suggesting physical

news-related activities

User profile

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Service Blueprint

                        

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Value Chain

                        

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We asked around 20 young people to comment on our prototypes. Most of them would like to try using the plugin as they found the UI design user-friendly and convenient for them to understand a topic from different perspectives and express their views. Using hashtags and comments to help identify fake news is easy as they are already familiar with these functions through social media applications. They also agreed that BBC News is a leading media company that is trustworthy to deliver these kinds of services. 
04 Prototyping
Validation
Learnings
Effective communication as a team

Since we were only given a few weeks to complete the project, we had to make decisions very quickly in every stage of the project. Communicating effectively to keep every teammate on the same page throughout the process is absolutely important to increase work efficiency. It was a bit difficult at the beginning as we had different work styles, but we managed to find a way to update our work progress that everyone was comfortable with.

Applying technology in designing services

This project made me ponder the opportunities and obstacles of employing artificial intelligence and data analysis in services and how designers could leverage it in our daily work. Both of the technologies were utilized to provide news searching function with a chatbot, categorize news by analyzing keywords, identify fake news by comparing news articles of the same topic from other news media.

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