Case study
BBC News Daily
Project summary
With a huge resurgence in email marketing, BBC News identified an opportunity to create a daily newsletter consisting of curated news to act as a morning briefing for BBC audiences.
The newsletter aimed to give readers an informal insight into the newsroom and a preview of the day ahead. Mixing UK and international news, it needed to highlight the pick of BBC News content and offer links to must-read stories from other news providers.
Role: User experience designer
Tasks: Competitor analysis, workshop coordination, storyboards, sketching, wireframes, final design, dev pairing
Approach: Audience research and feedback review, key audience definition, dev pairing (with an external agency), workshop planning, design refinement, release
The challenge
Create a newsletter with a conversational and informal tone while being respectful of the serious and upsetting nature of certain stories. Visually, the newsletter must be clean and easy to read, and users should have the sense that they have ‘completed the news’ and are set up for the rest of the day.
Research
A small amount of research concerning newsletters was available (particularly the ‘Breaking News’ newsletter). I used these sources to extract worthwhile findings that addressed several key questions. These findings included:
75% of BBC Breaking News email recipients reported that the emails ‘always’ or ‘usually’ tell them news that they haven’t heard before
33% of respondents said that the BBC Breaking News emails were their most frequent sources of breaking news
There was considerable interest from the respondents in daily or weekly news emails from the BBC
Audience definition
Based on previous user research, we divided our core audience into two distinct groups: an older, more traditional type of user who is satisfied with email as a method for quickly delivering news and who is not likely to use many apps; and a younger type of user whose news consumption stretches across multiple sources, devices, and platforms, and who would appreciate a curated overview of the day’s top stories.
Initial dev pairing
Before diving hastily into the design process, we needed to liaise with the external agency handling the development of the newsletter. Previously, the newsletter was built with an app called Taxi, which made the process quite convoluted.
The resulting meeting highlighted an array of new capabilities that would streamline the process and help us reach our key goal of delivering an elegant, modern-looking newsletter.
Initial explorations
Initial explorations were not very fruitful. Despite enthusiastic collaboration with various interested parties and stakeholders, we ended up creating a newsletter that simply duplicated the website rather than being its own unique proposition. As a result, we returned to the drawing board, after which I began organising a workshop to further analyse the problem.
Workshop
Ensuring that I had a representative from all interested parties, we got to work trying to solve the problem.
Competitor analysis
I put together a competitor analysis, looking at a variety of news sites and other commercial providers. We examined the broad spectrum of newsletter types ranging from the deadly serious to lighter, friendlier examples, which helped to inspire all the attendees.
Audience definition
We took our previous audience definition and clearly set out their user needs and journeys.
Workshop exercise
A short exercise took place where we started with a very basic, text-only BBC Newsletter and proceeded to build it up into an informal, informative, and clean newsletter. We avoided throwing an unlimited number of modules at the page and ensured that any part of the newsletter that departed from standard text did so only for a very good reason (e.g., ‘Correspondent' components that ‘sell’ BBC News contributors through the use of their imagery and choice quotes).
Design refinement and delivery
With our approach agreed on, the next task was for me to provide some visual refinement to the newsletter, explore some branding possibilities, and finalise additional components.
A key aspect of the refinement was to ensure that the newsletter followed the BBC Global Experience Language and BBC Accessibility Guidelines. However, there was leeway to suggest improvements to both if my explorations deemed it necessary.
The designs were then fully specced before pairing with our developer at the external agency.
Results and outcomes
The newsletter was well received by news subscribers when launched. Appreciation Index scores do continue to fluctuate but have reached a high of 81.3.
Soon after launch, the newsletter was scheduled to move to a new platform, which would allow for better tracking of user behaviours. Improvements to the newsletter are currently ongoing.