How can newsrooms utilize Text-to-speech as a viable means to disseminate news and retain daily listeners
TIMELINE
12 weeks
TEAM
Jack Shugrue
Jayee Dhawan
Prachi Garg
Vaidehi Vartak
TOOLS
Figma
FigJam
Microsoft 365
MY ROLE
Research
Heuristic Analysis
Journey Mapping
Concepts Development
CLIENT
CNN Digital team,
Head of Design
Head of Design strategy
Our design collaboration investigates how audio content can serve as a means to onboard younger and diverse audiences by identifying customization opportunities.
OPPORTUNITY
CNN team identified an opportunity to explore audio dissemination as a means to better serve the content on their website and mobile app.
While this technology is already being consumed in the industry today, the research and concept generations are directed toward identifying consumption patterns and benefits of text-to-speech in CNN's ecosystem.
DELIVERABLES TIMELINE
AUDIO NEWS CONSUMPTION TRENDS & BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
In order to determine how news is consumed and how it will be consumed in the future, the process started by identifying the ways in which people have consumed news in the past.
This helped us understand the mindset shift in users' consumption behavior and technology play in the adoption process.
RESIDUAL
• Social groups
• Radio
• Television
DOMINANT
• Multi-channel consumption,
social media
• News for all: inclusive + accessible
• Audio news on voice assistants
• Personalization in recommendations
EMERGING
• Interactive audio.
• Ai-generated news articles.
• TLDR shorts consumption.
• Time stamps for interest focussed
consumption.
WHAT IS AN AUDIO ECOSYSTEM
& WHO CAN BENEFIT FROM IT
The collaborative spider mapping method helped in identifying what are the perks of consuming news through audio not just for consumers but also for journalists.
INCLUSIVITY
Audio helps with identity protection preventing stereotypes being formed towards any reporter.
CONTENT DELIVERY
News that’s not repetitive yet a play between facts vs narrative driven
EASE OF USE
Weaves into people’s lifestyle allowing multi-tasking and continuity with consumption
ACCESSIBILITY
Audio provides significant support for digesting information.
Hearing text aloud helps readers follow along with the article easily.
GENZ
Audio content brings in younger audiences, getting them to care about news, and empowering them to have
their own opinions.
DIVERSITY
TTS gives listeners the ability to customize their experience based on language, accent preference, & mood type.
TEXT-TO-SPEECH, THE SWEET SPOT✨
While nesting in the audio journalism space, text-to-speech emerged as the most achievable strategy to move toward younger and global audiences due to its nature of flexibility and customization.
Upon further research, it was discovered that the direct and indirect competitors have also benefitted from this technology.
MAKING SENSE OF THE RESEARCH
We went on a mission🚀
Multiple qualitative interviews, user experiments and stakeholder collaborations later, 3 user archetypes were identified that defined today's audio journalism consumption audience.
🐣 Emerging News Consumers
Views news as a form of information gathering
Prefers news to be delivered in a way that doesn’t overwhelm them.
Wants to know just the relevant high-level facts
🎧 Habitual Podcast Listeners
Views news as a form of information gathering
Prefers news to be delivered in a way that doesn’t overwhelm them.
Wants to know just the relevant high-level facts
🗞️ Core News Consumers
News as a means for compelling content
Sees news consumption as a civic duty
Want to engage with news daily, but can find it hard to stay up to date
THEIR CURRENT AUDIO CONSUMPTION JOURNEY
After mapping the existing user journey of our archetypes, it was discovered that content discovery, long-form content, and user retention were the major improvement areas to create a smoother audio consumption experience for CNN's users.
CONNECTING THE DOTS
1. Feature Engagement
Identify opportunity area in the app ecosystem where text-to-speech can be discovered as a feature offering to help users consume their content faster.
When the user lands on the app, they are introduced to a new listen icon on top nav.
Tapping on the icon, users see a bottom anchored audio widget with synchronous text highlights for those who want to read and listen (catering to users with reading disabilities.)
DISCOVERY.
OPTIMIZED WIDGET.
Enabling content discovery inside the Text-to-speech widget so that the users don’t have to exit the experience and search.
Offering similar topics curated playlist to the listener to give a narrative of past and related events.
2. Customization & Inclusivity
2. Customization & Inclusivity
NARRATORS & PLAYBACK SPEED
Listeners can take control of how they want their article to sound by customizing their audio experience.
Choosing between tone and narrators based on mood of the article and the accent that listener is comfortable with.
Control the pace of each article’s narration, allowing users to be more productive, or listen at a leisurely speed.
3. Retention Strategy
PERSONALIZED PUSH NOTIFICATIONS
To meet the listeners outside of CNN's ecosystem, a curated and personalized push notification strategy will retain them back in the ecosystem by the offering of time-
KEY TAKEAWAYS
SENSORY DESIGN
This project was unique and challenging as the touch point of the output was both visual and auditory. Stitching both the senses together to create a cohesive experience was a new experience for me.
DESIGN FOR GLOBAL AUDIENCE
CNN attracts users from a diverse background and culture which pushed me to research and interview users and uncover solutions that will their encompass requirements from the audio feature.
THANK YOU,
CNN DIGITAL TEAM
For your collaboration efforts, trust and time given to this project.
