Astro

The challenge

Create a proposal for an application that helps people to stay up to date effectively, avoiding information overload.

The outcome

Astro is mobile app designed to help people to keep up with the preferred content and authors.

Length of the project

1 week (Fictional app)

Role

Lead UX Designer (research, interface design, branding and microcopy)

Tools used

Figma, Affinity designer

Skills developed

User research, UX writing, Prototyping, Wireframing, Marketing

Context

This case was developed during the quarantine period as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, when staying at home was associated with the idea of contact with the world predominantly through virtual means.

To a certain extent in this period, the extra production of content by various players increased and the whole context aggravated for some people the feeling of information overload, due to the excess of content that we are submitted to every day.

Astro then comes as a solution to ease the pain of information overload, giving the user the power to customize and limit the scope of content the user is exposed to.

It is made for all people who want to keep up with the hottest news and content of interest.

Research

The intention of the discovery process for this case was to explore the feeling and the mechanisms that people have created to deal with so much information being conveyed every day.

I conducted a qualitative research process through 4 in-depth interviews with a semi-structured script that served to collect insights and patterns in the user's journey when searching and consuming content.

With a brief review of the literature on information overload, it was also possible to observe developments of this phenomenon in the behavior and productivity of the economically active population and what measures can be taken to mitigate these effects.

Journey

I realized that there are two distinct moments of search: the objective and the exploratory. In both cases there is an alternation between different search applications and the final consumption of content.

Necessities and pains

Filters to specify a search (Instagram engine, for example, has restrictions for searching within publications).
Trust in available sources and fake news.
Know updated or specific information about a caller.
Be exposed to so much news at all times, or information that is not of interest to you.
In objective research, get the focus on the specified task.
In exploratory research, you can follow the latest news, most commented news, related topics.
Save good references to use in future searches: consumption of specific information or as a reference from which the user starts his search.

Opportunities

Gather omnichannel content from interested parties in just one place - without having to accompany you on all platforms.
Option to save multimedia references: text, images, videos, audios, etc.
Have a choice of different dashboards / screens to meet user preference: exploratory or objective research.
Indication of verified content (create credibility mechanism).
Gather content from subjects of interest to the user.

Insights for solution

Keeping in mind the struggle through several applications until finding available information and a restrictive filter method that some users create to restrict the quantity and quality of the content that is exposed, I proposed as solutions:

Save content without leaving the browser: way of saving like Pinterest;
Being able to save various types of media;
Follow the same person on all platforms, but seeing everything within the app;
Customize viewing modes;
App only loads summaries (title + subtitle + a few lines), this less burdens the data traffic and gives access to headings of potential user interest;
Being able to save content in the app with standard text style for all saved texts, without inheriting CSS from the original website or advertisements that pollute the reading.