Real stories, real fun
NewsNow is an iOS mobile app that challenges the way we receive traditional news and our goal is to get the younger generation into becoming news lovers. NewsNow was developed using XCode and SwiftUi and it distributes short 60-second real news stories that are told in a real fun way. NewsNow is the future of storytelling and aims to become a trustworthy news source that people can rely on and enjoy.
The Process
We started off our Capstone journey by communicating as a team which of the three emerging media ideas we wanted to go with from our One Project presentation. We utilized one of the agile methodologies by creating an agile board on Trello to ideate and stay organized. My team member, Ereina, came up with the NewsNow concept and created the first wireframe prototype on Figma for what would act as a guide for development of the NewsNow app. Once we all collectively agreed to choose NewsNow as our Capstone project, I, as lead code developer, took the wireframe prototype Ereina made and tried to recreate it in XCode and SwiftUi as close as possible. While I was doing that, Ereina and Mamie were working on the beginning of our Design Systems for NewsNow which covered the style guide such as the logo, color palette, fonts and icons used as well as our project brief. Our project brief is a researched compiled and comprehensive document that includes details such as the NewsNow’s problem and solution, competition, audience, and more.
After our first iteration of the NewsNow app, we continued to work on a weekly deadline to complete the Alpha version of our app and our project brief. We worked on setting up the rudimentary framework of the NewsNow app and made sure we had applied our style guide and logo throughout the app. We established our goals, coded the bones of the app, and focused on our main features.
Our product features include:
- Easy to Use Homepage which allows the user to scroll through content through the day’s top breaking news stories.
- Preference Selection that enables users to hand-select news topics they are interested in which tailors the viewing experience.
- Discover Page that allows for deeper exploration of tending stories and breaking news through keyword searches.
- Source Verification that ensues transparency to every viewer by initiating background checks to content creators and listing out their qualifications to tell the news.
- Addicting Storytelling that allows users to create and post.
Then, we began UX-testing for our NewsNow app. We created a UX-Research Plan that would serve as our foundational strategy for our UX-testing. This was created to detail out our testing methodology, goals, and would act as our guide while we conduct testing. Once we started UX-testing by sampling our target market, we were able to gather quantitative and qualitative research based off of subjects that tested our UX and UI of our app wireframe. Upon receiving feedback, we were able to utilize our findings and improve the NewsNow app interface.
The Challenge
There were a few challenges we faced during the time we were UX-testing. From our findings, we had the most complains about the app navigation, and the accessibility to the NewsNow verification application. We also faced major and minor roadblocks such as persistent bugs through stitching, formatting issues, and un-clickable buttons. As a group, we dealt with inconsistencies within our test administration because problems from the project restricted users from processing further in the app and caused the simulator to crash multiple times. This resulted in us having more qualitative data rather than quantitative because we had to assist the participants.
The Solution
We took into consideration of our UX-findings as we made the next and final iterations to the Beta version of the NewsNow app. Our solutions to the problems include:
- Starting over into a new XCode project to fix any errors and clean up and organize the code
- Integrating better contrasting colors to make user selections stand out
- Correcting display formatting issues
- Making the NewsNow reporter application easily accessible to users
As frustrating as it was to start over and look at the code line-by-line again, it was necessary in order to find the errors that my team faced while conducting our UX-testing. I also relied on online resources in order to find tutorials that would help with any issues.
The Results
Overall, it has been a journey creating and developing the NewsNow app. We as a group have come a long way since the beginning, and we are so excited to be able to show off our product.
We thought about possible future developments for the NewsNow app that might help our solution to the problem. This includes:
- Live feature for content creators to broadcast in real time.
- Response video feature so creators can respond to comments or other users’ videos.
- Parental features because we are aiming to get the younger generation more engaged and a parent or guardian may desire to monitor what their child is watching.
As our program comes to an end, my team and I have worked on our product website, trailer, poster, and Emerge presentation in order to package everything about the NewsNow app and brand.
We also learned some lessons throughout this journey which were to:
- Plan ahead and figure out everyone’s strengths and weaknesses in order to see where each one of you could elevate each other during this project.
- Be productive and communicate since we are busy people juggling being full-time students and/or having jobs — this means we work on different schedules. It is important to stay in constant communication and update each other to cause less confusion.
- Be excited about the project you and your team choose. It should be something you are genuinely interested in because it would make the overall project enjoyable in the long-term.
After so many long nighters and breakdowns while developing this app, there were times I wanted to give up on coding however, I couldn’t have done it without my team and their support. When things got tough, we made sure to find a way where we could help each other out. NewsNow has been a great team project to work and is such a great concept to get people in the younger generation like us more involved and engaged.