Berkeley Innovation x Nexa:
Reimaging Gen-Z News Consumption Patterns
​Team: Rhyu Olide, Saul Rios, Mira Ercingoz, Piper Yu, Eric Yamaguchi
Role: Contract Product Designer, Prototyping Lead
Timeline: 1/24 - 5/24
Background...
HMW create a multi-sensorial and engaging UX to consume news, beginning with the text of a basic article?
TLDR: Nexa is an AI news mobile app startup that intends to offer an engaging experience to adapt to Gen Z’s behaviors around news. We designed a fully prototyped app from scratch, ideating a brand identity and component library. By focusing on short-form video content and AI interaction, we provided Nexa with a prototype to answer our HMW statement.
So how'd we do it?
Research Methods
6
Secondary Sources
Competitive Analysis
8 User Interviews
38 Survey Responses
Putting it together...
What does this mean?
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Gen-Z engages with news in low-effort environments, usually through passive behaviors.
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Gen-Z engages more with apps that offer positive reinforcement through interactions and features.
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Gen-Z wants news related to their lives and interests made available through simple interfaces.
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Gen-Z views news as high-effort research, leading to information overload from mass media.
Building the user experience.
Before building a prototype, we needed to create the user experience flow. To do this, each consultant mapped out pre-existing competitor user flows for Instagram, New York Times, Reddit, and X. After understanding industry standards and user needs, we proposed this flow to our clients.
Creating the product
I spearheaded the creation of a design system for a cohesive design. My roles were delegating tasks and designing the component system.
Feature Recommendation #1: Tailored Onboarding
An onboarding system that caters to individual user needs, targeting our insight referencing Gen-Z's need for a tailored experience while providing a simple onboarding process.
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This feature will be used to determine recommendations for the for you and explore pages.
Feature Recommendation #2: Home Page
Breaking news and for you tabs to stay competitive in the media market, providing a descriptive, straightforward user interface and promoting passive interaction.
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Engagement levels will be measured to feed the algorithm and tailor recommended content for the user.
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Article views are customizable between text-overlay and audio only modes.
Feature Recommendation #3: Nexa AI Tool
AI chatbot feature that reinvites news consumption intends to simplify high-effort news research by streamlining information shown to a user, thus mitigating information overload.
The AI will suggest articles through conversational chat to address user needs of a more convenient news filtering method, while also providing positive reinforcement through its prompting.
Feature Recommendation #4: Explore Page
Explore page integrating recommended searches to expedite news research processes, followed by AI-generated articles, leveraging user interests and providing a more tailored user experience.
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The explore page is created to offer users a low-effort environment where they can explore topics they are interested in.
Reflection
Leading the prototyping sprint for this project was a profoundly enriching experience. It challenged me to synthesize our team's diverse ideas into a cohesive product direction while ensuring we aligned with the client's vision. This project taught me the significance of leveraging insights to inform product design. It underscored the need for effective communication and collaboration to achieve a shared vision. This experience has deepened my understanding of the product development process and enhanced my ability to lead a team to create innovative, user-focused solutions.
