Requirements --- In The Know

Our research tells us that the majority of people (67%) want an interactive interface for a news website. This is reflected in the websites design and features. The user has the power to like and dislike articles; this function is a crucial part of the website as it makes the user be involved in the content and feel like they are contributing to the website. They also have the ability to leave a comment on the article; the most interactive feature of In The Know. The comment will be in the form of a ‘live comment’ and will appear beside the article in the section the user selects. This will be then visible to other readers who view the article after the comment is left. There is an option though to turn off the comments if they become too much for the user.

Our survey also revealed to us that people want a coluorful website and we took this into consideration during the design process. We decided to incorporate this concept on the homepage by designating a news topic to a colour. For example all sports are coded with a Violet colour at the bottom.

The layout of the homepage is succinct and informative. We have 10 news stories on the homepage that all fit into the screen without the user having to scroll down. One of the comments we received on a previous prototype was that we were wasting space by only having one story per line and we rectified this issue effectively. There are two large boxes on the homepage, which are reserved for the biggest two news stories of the day, along with two medium sized boxes and six small boxes. It is up to the discretion of the research team to decide what stories the most significant and hence which box they should be placed in.

Our research also tells us that people prefer to have more text than images when reading a news story. BUT they do want a decent amount of image, with many of our survey respondents saying they like about 20%-40% of articles to be image. This is reflected in the home

We chose the news organisations based on two factors; 1) Their reputation within the media world and the general public and 2) Their reach to wide audiences. With this in mind we thought it was best to choose both a television station and print media organization within the two heavyweights of western media; The United States and United Kingdom. From America we chose The New York Times and CNN, and from the UK we chose The Guardian and the BBC. We also chose a media organisation from both India and China because they are both emerging media markets with saturated populations. These were the Times of India and China Daily. Because the app is founded in Australia, we also decided to include The Australian newspaper and the ABC.  These eight media outlets provide the foundation of In The Know.

We chose the news issues we did because they were all prevalent global issues in the week the prototype was due. Ideally, when the website is fully functional we would select the 10 biggest global issues of the day and place them on the website. But this was not possible to produce for the prototype.