:::::::::;If incoming students are reading be forewarned — your professor(s) are trash:::::::::::::::
One thought I had after last class after observing the toys in motion — we were all very interested in the objects for which the movement wasn’t obvious from the toy’s structure. However, after we watched the toys in motion and knew how they moved did they become much less desirable than the toys based on “obvious” movement or personal attachment? Particularly because some of the toys had movements which were not organic to the way a living thing would move — once the movement was discovered were they less useful as play things?
I was very intrigued by the toy with the red coil that changed direction — but after I knew it changed direction what would I do with it? It wouldn’t bring the same emotional “aw” as the pig which looks happy all the time. It would spark interest in visitors when they first saw so it could be a good ice breaker or stress relief but how useful that would be depends on where I would keep it (how many new visitors interact with the space, etc).
On a personal level there are also personal attachments that are unique to the viewer that are impossible to predict. I had seen the wind up pig before because I bought one for my mother when I worked in Hungary. I had a cat named Pig when I was younger and I buy pig objects as souvenirs so anything that is a pig has particular significance for me. The same way the “toys” that were made from salvaged junk would have a significance if your daughter made them but not for other users.
Looking back maybe one of my favorite toys would be the squirrel because it had an unexpected movement but was also cute and could be used more easily in narrative play. My favorite might have been the tiny baby wind up toy because it had a surprising movement because it was very fast and was also abstract enough to potentially be different things — like a “baby” or I thought it looked like a little piggy.
It was interesting to see different groupings in our “getting to know you” post-it exercise. Personally I found after my group’s first topic, which was easy to categorize in an interesting way, I approached the second feeling like I needed to find an interesting structure.
In previous experience in school and professionally I’ve been taught that trying to force data into a structure is a (very) bad practice, but it is so tempting. Looking around the room other groups probably felt the same thing. Some topics were easy to come up with creative visualizations, some were stretched in ways maybe unnecessary. You can’t discard data you don’t want and you can’t force connections — even if it means your chart will not be as pretty : ( it will make it more meaningful.
Project One
For news review my group was assigned: “Neutral” news sources and I am going to go ahead and state my opinion:
“NEUTRALITY” IS A CONSERVATIVE AGENDA
For example — I followed the way Boris Johnson’s agenda to cancel parliament sessions before Brexit. He is trying to force a no-deal. He is trying to force a no-deal because he and his cronies will financial benefit from the privatization of public assets. Acting like his actions are just a thing that happened — or a matter of normal political disagreement — is not neutral.
USA TODAY deciding to put a story about “Werewolf Syndrome” on the front page while the Amazon is burning — not neutral.
I noticed that the AP being an aggregator did not change the default WordPress template but that is less offensive and important to me than the idea Boris Johnson — who was elected by a tiny fraction of his own party — suspending debate and democracy to force a no-deal Brexit does not warrant type set 100 sized font in bold red means the source is not “neutral.”
PBS Newshour deciding to render a hurricane tracker in the exact same visual space and manner as the suspension of democracy in a G7 country within less than a day is not neutral.
The Wall Street Journal heavily promoting it’s editorial content to advertisers then putting the same race baiting content in small, imageless renderings below the fold to the right to non logged in users is also not neutral.
Class Two
In class we discussed different lenses in which to analyze coverage:
* critical
* tolerant (to multiple perspectives)
* understanding
* rationale
* analytical
* situational (in a broader context (agendas + gatekeepers))
We also had an introduction to “napkin drawing” — deceptively simple ways of sketching information. When doing my sketches I initially thought I could portray my point “There is too much news and NEVER enough context” a few different ways. I tried “just showing it” as rows of alerts on a phone, and blobs filled with repeated words, but eventually found quantity and time line as the best methods. It is difficult to find the right balance between not having enough to convey a point and obscuring the point with too much information.
Project Two
When my group met to discuss the sites we looked at I had the question - are we expecting users to bread these sources through the dedicated homepage on their desktop? There are few news organizations I visit regularly, but a lot of news I happen upon when it’s shared or aggregated.
This was also interesting in consideration of our reading for class about Typography and style. All of our news sources existed before digital. They had a print style meant to convey a certain authority and style and potentially tried to adjust this style to the web. However, the stylistic choices they have made to distinguish their brand are largely irrelevant when their content is aggregated. As stated in the reading:
“Whereas the space of a printed novel suffers little disruption, a novel delivered on an iPad potentially competes with other texts, videos, or websites calling from beyond the virtual margins.”
They have a logo but small stylistic aspects like typography are determined by Facebook, or Android, or Apple, etc. Therefore, it maybe more worthwhile to make content a distinguished feature more than “look” and/or visual “feel.”
I looked at Pew research and it did confirm a large audience for mobile news news https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/17/use-of-mobile-devices-for-news-continues-to-grow-outpacing-desktops-and-laptops/
I didn’t find specifics about social media vs apps vs aggregators but it did convince me each outlets visual particularities (ie typography, grid structure, etc) are not as relevant as they may have been in the past. With this in mind I decided to focus on how these Apps display “breaking” stories both via their App and through aggregating sources.
I downloaded four apps on Saturday: AP News, PBS News Hours, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.
08/31:
11 total alerts
AP News: 5
USA Today: 5
WSJ: 1
09/01:
8 total alerts
AP News: 2
USA Today: 2
WSJ: 3
Link to Google sheet with headlines
For the two full days I had alerts on my phone for these apps I received 19 total alerts. If you assume waking hours between 8am — 10pm that is over one alert every hour.
Considering this may have been a “busy” weekend for news this may have been overall high; However, most alerts were of the same variety. The shooting in Odessa received 10 notifications and Hurricane Dorian 8. Also I have to consider, was this “busy” or does the news cycle require certain times must be busy?
I had a difficult time with the aggregators. I first went to Google News with my personal account but because I have a history with Google my “top stories” were exclusively about topics I had searched about previously, or from sources I had already visited. I could not get the app to sync with my Andrew ID.
For the Apple News app I again already had a history and I had to go in and “favorite” the news sources assigned for this project. Apple also placed considerable real estate towards “trending” stories of little topical value from sources like Buzzfeed, Newsweek, and Golf. (Sample headline: “22 Pictures That Will Remind You Just How Amazing People Can Be Sometimes) There was also a Special “For You” recommending stories like: “Brad Pitt popped up at Kanye’s Sun Day Service.” There is nothing in my search history on any platform which would suggest an interest in Brad Pitt, Kanye West, religion, or Sunday services so I have no idea where that would come from.
Areas of Intervention:
I’ve read thoughts of surprise about the seeming contradiction between the availability of information and a lack of information literacy but viewing these alerts and sources I can imagine why that might be.
Looking at my weekend of receiving alerts did I learn 23 things? Absolutely not. If I were to break it down
* I learned these was a shooting in Odessa which left at least 5 people dead.
* I learned there was a hurricane which was upgraded to category 5 and may or may not hit the US
Many of the sources had the same information in the headlines and a few alerts had the feel often complained about with Apps, which is they didn’t have anything to say, but wanted to remind us they were still there, ready to be opened.
Furthermore, I felt like I was missing the larger point of why someone would read the news. I read the news to find out about situations which affect me on a critical level, areas of interest, and to feel more connected to the world and social structures. None of the alerts I received via these apps hit those areas.
What I really envision wanting is an app something like:
“All the News that Happened 3 Days Ago”
Where news sources wouldn’t constantly be competing for the most breaking of coverage for everyone, everywhere. Context for the history of the problem, the background of the issue, why it’s there, and where it might be going. More traditional slow news, like a magazine.
For example, my post last week complained about Boris Johnson suspending parliament. Specifically the lack of context, the reactions, the history of the issue, and why this was unusual. Less than a week later I had to go digging to find updates. If I hadn’t previously been aware of Brexit the article would have had little meaning. The Guardian has a similar structure for “related” content that gives more information and a broader context.
If one considers the popularity of podcasts, they are essentially longform medium towards specific content.
Group Presentation
When we began preparing for our presentation, my group decided to take the approach of highlighting the area of intervention we found — breaking news alerts — rather than spend a significant portion of time analyzing things like visual style or outlet history.
In retrospect, I approached this project from the angle of what I found interesting. I’ve already studied layout and color ad nauseam in undergrad and as a web designer so I found no interest whatsoever in the obvious layout and color usage of the individual desktop sites. I also was familiar with the basic history of each outlet so I didn’t spend much time investigating that either.
The presentation suffered from this approach because the audience was likely not aware of some of the facts I already knew and it would have clarified aspects of the findings.
For example, AP News was an outlet which made money from licensing content to individual newspapers. When the paper in Cleveland needed a story for the ‘World’ section it would go to an AP source. As individual news outlets are dwindling and social shares do not provide a steady source of income — would it make sense it to have a model which attempts to emphasize “breaking” and continually streaming content? This are things I didn’t investigate and would make sense to explore.
Also I think I could have tried to incorporate more visuals, for example drawing out what different notifications looked like on phone in more detail. Another thing my group and others did was not video taping our presentations so we would could make sure what we were writing on the board was visible.
I once had to design a booth for a convention and I made the same mistake — thinking you have the entire surface to use for visuals when in reality you have a much smaller amount of real estate which can be visible to the audience. Completely missed that.
Project Summary
Introduction
We were assigned the following sources:
1. USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/
2. PBS News Hour: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/
3. Associated press: https://www.apnews.com/
4. The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/
These news sources lead the industry as a source for neutral news that provides factual, ethical and relevant journalism that is factual, ethical and relevant; however they have had varied success adapting to the digital landscape.
AP News — — 1849, was founded and during the era of print publication and acted as an intermediary between markets. With the continuing downfall of local print media, AP News has shifted to focusing on aggregating its content on social media sites and platforms like Yahoo News. Nevertheless, revenue has fallen significantly in recent years.
USA Today — — 1982, was distributed nationally and had a reputation for its full color pages and elevated use of graphics. This approach was initially derided as devaluing the format of print journalism and USA Today was further criticized for preferring general interest stories to traditional in-depth reporting. The company’s digital and print publication went through a major overhaul in 2012 — focusing on new technologies such as touch screen and interactive features.
The Wall Street Journal — 1889, was owned by News Corp, is widely known for its conservative op-eds and business-centric reporting. News Corp has the ability to significantly fund the WSJ, allowing the publication to allocate resources to investigative stories.
PBS Newshour — 1975, was an outlier in this field. As a PBS property its funding follows a different revenue structure. It is primarily a TV broadcast, therefore it’s digital needs are separate from AP, USA Today, or The Wall Street Journal.
As digital surpasses print our publications are struggling to differentiate themselves competitively in the market and find adequate revenue streams. Since these news platforms predate the internet with foundations in print and television the importance of staying relevant in the digital landscape is paramount to their efforts to continue to be accessible in the digital age as their competitors continue to adapt.
VIsual Analysis
Visual Structure
In our evaluation of the four neutral news sources AP News, PBS NewsHour, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) we assessed three different characteristics of design. Starting with a review of each desktop site; our four sources demonstrated key similarities in visual architecture and hierarchy. Although the grid structure between them varied the hierarchy of a primary news stories, secondary news stories and tertiary news stories was consistent throughout.
Visual Form
Despite their consistent structure, imagery and type were utilized to represent distinct personal styles. For example, the type style in AP news was very straightforward with a sans serif font that complemented the factual driven reporting. The WSJ took a similar approach but drew on their history in print, displaying headlines in serif fonts and paragraphs in a slab-serif font mimicking the authority of a legacy print publication. AP News and WSJ also used raw journalistic imagery, displaying a sense of immediate local reporting. In contrast the imagery used in USA Today and PBS NewsHour is more human centered and the content is presented with the intent of evoking strong personal emotions.
Content Framing
When reviewing the headlines and stories of Hurricane Dorian across all 4 websites, we noticed that despite all being “fairly neutral” sources, there were variations in the framing chosen to inform readers about the potential impacts of the hurricane. The Wall Street Journal, true to its founding as a business-oriented outlet, kept a distant, factual approach to the tone of their coverage, publishing stories speculating and commenting upon how businesses would be impacted. On the other hand, AP News, PBS NewsHour and USA Today described in detail the emotions and apprehensions of the common public, including on-the-ground interviews and photographs.
One common thread throughout all sources and avenues of receiving content (mobile, desktop, app, aggregation, etc) was an emphasis on “breaking” content. The WSJ uses red to distinguish “exclusive” content, “breaking” stories and to highlight stories that had recently been updated. AP News and USA Today utilized a red banner to notify visitors of developing breaking stories which are updated frequently.
Important discoveries:
As we moved on to examining the properties on mobile browsers and mobile apps we noticed this same technique of highlighting breaking news stories carried over into excessive notifications, emphasis on delivering breaking news quickly (sometimes inaccurately), and dramatizing the tone of the event.
We monitored the alerts sent via the apps for approximately 48 hours between Saturday September 1st and Monday September 3rd. During this period we received 23 notifications. 10 notifications were about a shooting in Texas, 8 about Hurricane Dorian, 3 about a boat fire in Southern California, and a handful of sports and special interest topics. For both the WSJ AND AP news there was always a bold title of “breaking news” followed by the content. USA Today consistently used images and headline/paragraph format for the alerts.
As we analyzed the headlines sent through mobile we remarked on the perceived urgency and overload of action verbs crammed into each update. Frenzy, chaos, active shooter, multiple victims, believed dead, feared dead, powerful, monstrous, were all used. At one point there were four notifications waiting on the phone and in the urge to provide “breaking” content USA Today erroniously claimed there were two active shooters in Texas (there was in fact only one.)
This brought home the question, what was the intent of sending “breaking” notifications and how has this influx of exposure to continually “breaking” content affected us?
Intervention Concept
I think like most groups — it’s a bit of a struggle to think how our news overload and lack of engagement can be solved. After brainstorming with a few different ideas (including physical objects) we thought of maybe a browser plugin or site or aggregator which would try to “gamify” the news.
One concept was that before a user could share a news story they would need to scroll/read to the bottom and do a quick 20 or so word summary. This would be part of a system which would offer news quizzes, rankings and badges for sharing, etc
There could be a badge for variety of sources shared, reading an opposing view point, etc
One of the foreseeable issues however is how motivated users would be by purely virtual rewards. Or how different demographics would feel engaged.
We were also unclear on exactly what form this might take — an extension, app, FB game or some other form.
Further discussion of project
After discussing the project on Thursday, the group came to the realization that our gamification of the news did not get to the crux of our problem with breaking news; that is was overwhelming and caused disengagement.
A potential solution we thought could be a visualization that didn’t overwhelm the user. Drawing inspiration from the site https://www.newslifespan.com/ we began thinking about how graphs could be engaging.
I came up with the idea of doing a sort of web chart with four axis's’ for live breaking news; # of shares, # of articles, # of sources, and timeline. We also could incorporate timelines of weekly stories.
Project Retrospect
I think one of the major takeaways from this project is that sometimes there is no “perfect” solution. The media landscape is complex, human attention spans are shorts, sometimes as a designer you have to accept a “better” intervention that still leaves edges around the problem.
The Brief, what we ended up titling our intervention,. works well as a way to get a top level overview of news stories. It would help users be better informed than if they didn’t interact with news at all, however, to be well informed one may need to take a step further.
I think our visualizations were strong, simple, and it is something I could imagine looking at daily. I wish I had devoted more time to prototyping as I believe a few more screens and tighter layout could have clarified some questions.
Also, I would be interested in further steps. One suggestion from our presentation was an option of allowing users to “follow” stories — (if I were to move this to my portfolio I may consider adding this option.) There is always a “further” step to an intervention and I would like to consider it further.
