Significant Learnings from the Redesign of the New York Times app

The team aimed to offer users short, timely articles that take only 2-5 minutes to read. The app would personalize the news based on users' schedules and habits.

They also carried out research to find:

• The most widely-used media for obtaining news.

• What people do with their phones on pick-up.

• When people use their phones.

They conducted qualitative research on potential users and identified their target audience as tech-savvy New Yorkers aged 20-40 who lacked time to read the daily newspaper due to their busy schedules.

They analyze the input from these potential users and they concluded that their app should be based on three key principles:

• Seamless Integration of the app into users' daily habits

• Simplicity of usage.

• Politeness (in the sense that the app mustn't contain intrusive notifications and irrelevant information.

They then drew no less than fifteen unique designs and asked the users to choose the one they feel is the best. After which they made visual storyboard to study how they will explore this feature and what are all the circumstances they use in this app.

Then the final prototype were made which is of two modes

Manual Mode: It will ask the user preferences, asking how much time he has. The personalized news will be given to the user based on it.

Automatic mode: They emphasize more on the seamless integration with google calendar. It understands the user lives in a better way and give them news at the right time.