Task
Design a newsletter app from scratch, focused on improving long-term user retention.
Ideation & Architecture
For improving long-term retention, I focused on the following themes:
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Engaging and intuitive onboarding experience that shows the value of the app and allows a user to start reading immediately
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Personalized experience, including smart reading recommendations and regular reminders based on observed user patterns
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Gamification that motivates daily returns by using rewards, challenges, and streaks
I also outlined the complete architecture of the product so I could choose a few flushed-out, key flows to focus on for the case study. These are the main pages and their uses:
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Home
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Use: Start reading with minimal clicks
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Content: Search, for you recommendations, discover, continue reading
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Library
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Use: Your personal workspace
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Content: Organize saves, reflect, see highlights, notes, reading history
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Feed
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Use: Community-driven reading inspiration
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Content: Socialize, connect with friends, notification list, friend recommendations, external facing profile
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Learning
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Use: Track your progress and achievements
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Content: Goals, achievements, learning modules, progress stats​​​
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User Goals, Features, & Wireframes
I created user goals for each of the main pages, along with any possible features a user would need to succeed in those goals. I also designed low-fidelity wireframes of the screens I would prototype.
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Some of the users goals include:
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Home Goal: To discover exactly what you want to read within 8 seconds (average attention span) with personalized discovery of new content as well as all of the user’s typical reads in one spot.
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Article Viewer Goal: To create a seamless reading experience that allows a user to easily read, process, and understand writings while encouraging engagement and retention.
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Design System
I read several studies on the best colors to use for digital reading and the most readable fonts across demographics to develop a quick design system. Because most people use their phone for reading news in the early morning or late at night, I suggest a dynamic color system that switches between light and dark mode automatically depending on the time of day.
Final Designs
I designed high-fidelity screens that include daily saved reading goals, personalized article recommendations and topics, bookmarked reads for later, AI summaries of where a user left off reading, a search for related articles based on a highlighted phrase rather than the whole article, and a reading queue accessible by swiping left.
