Intro

Tidings, a digital media startup operating within SSE Business Lab, aimed to craft a reimagined news experience tailored specifically for digital natives (18-35s) who largely grew up in the world of the social, participatory web.

Challenges and Objectives

The study aimed to address the challenge of reaching and engaging digital natives, a critical audience for the sustainability of news, who were proving increasingly elusive. The key objectives were to uncover how this demographic consumes news and to develop design strategies to attract and deeply connect with them.

Solution

Part I: Empathise

I kickstarted the project by understanding the people & market I was designing for. I dived deep into understanding the current media landscape. I brought in research from multiple papers, journals, annual reports across Reuters, Pew Research Institute and others to gain insights. The key takeaways were,

Digital natives prefer news that fosters personal growth and enjoyment. They seek connections to the broader world while fulfilling social and personal needs.

Digital consumption dominates this age group, extending to their news behaviours, which mirror the characteristics of digital media: mobile, social, integrated, fast-paced, and interactive.

Digital natives seek concise, interactive news formats prioritising authenticity over sensationalism, favouring short videos, infographics, and interactive articles for depth without information overload.

I also did one-on-one interviews with 14 users across gender, within the age range of 18-35. The aim was understanding how, when and why do individuals engage with different kinds of news? Following are the key takeaways,

The role of news appears primarily individualistic; it’s about what it can do for them as individuals – rather than for society as a whole.

The interviews also revealed that the differences in the relationships young people have with the news depend on three key areas: the moment, the individual and the medium.

Part II: Conceptualise

The project solution addressed digital natives' pain points of complexity, choice overload, and unfamiliarity using design principles like Cognitive Load, Decision Fatigue, Familiarity Bias, and Progressive Disclosure. Multiple design directions were explored and tested, with final choices guided by usability, scalability, technical feasibility, and accessibility.

Part III: Design

Among individuals under 35, news behaviours mirror wider media trends—digital, mobile, and socially integrated. Bite-sized content serves as the initial touchpoint, creating a sense of urgency and importance, acting as a gateway to more detailed articles. This format aligns with the fast-paced, continuous, and actively interactive nature of their media consumption habits.

Adapting news storytelling to fit audience expectations and moments of receptivity is crucial. Creating mobile-native formats, such as visual content and on-demand audio podcasts, resonates particularly well with those under 35, aligning with their mobile phone usage patterns. This diversity of formats not only caters to varied preferences but also allows news to seamlessly adapt to different occasions, with specific formats chosen for optimal contextual relevance.

Engagement with news among individuals under 35 is highly individualistic, driven by personal preferences and varying tastes. In this digital era where customisation is the norm, young users expect news platforms to provide personalised experiences that align with their individual needs, interests, and mental states. The emphasis is on user agency, enabling individuals to have control over the presentation, formats, and tones of news, much like the personalised content and recommendations they are accustomed to in other digital services.

Results & Impact

Successful ideation, creation and launch of Tidings iOS mobile app on the App Store within 6 months, targeting digital natives and yielding a notable 142% increase in user base post-launch.