﻿ COCO | OwlFactor


Everyone loves reading the news.
Branding, Identity, RRSS, Web & App UI / UX

Some of our best conversations are the result of reading a great story. But recently, those conversations have become less enjoyable as we instead debate if a story is biased or outright false. Speaking with hundreds of people, OwlFactor found this mistrust and confusion around the news to be pervasive. So they applied their knowledge of technology and design to solve this problem - restoring faith in the news.

OwlFactor analyzes news articles for political bias, credibility and quality, and suggests better stories. They believe that high-quality news can spark conversations that enlighten us, bring us together, and improve our communities.

The brief: Create a personalized and customizable news app, that learns from it's users, designed from scratch to provide a tool to allow users to customize their news feed to fit their needs and point of view.

Client: OwlFactor
Date: 2017 / Present

The Challenge

Users today distrust news platforms and feel that everything they read is partial, and loaded with intentionality, where objectivity is lost and what online media seek is to convince them and end up antagonizing them. When reading news, users want to read objective information, with which to form their own opinion and conclusions, they want to maintain their independence of thought, and at the same time feel respected and not treated like children who are forced to think in a particular way. The challenge is to build an Experience and User Interface that presents the information in a clear, direct way that allows the user to filter the contents in the way that seems correct and aligned to their way of thinking. Based on this situation analysis the challenge was to design an app that fulfilled all the users needs and is easy and friendly at the same time.

The Scope

Purpose + Vision Articulation, Brand Identity, Visuals, Iconography, UI, UX, Illustration.

Honesty. This is the word that sums up OwlFactor’s product. With this simple and direct concept, we designed the visual UI and the UX of the app, making it easier for users to filter the news, and to have a broader view on each topic. By using cards we summarized the relevant information for each news, so it's really easy to get the most important info and be able to catch up on the news at a glance, with the certainty that your feed is made just for you as the app learns about you with each interaction. The result is a strong, modern app.

Many points of view.

We started with an exhaustive analysis of the main news platforms and online media, considering the best practices and users habits on news reading. Having that in mind, we developed a solid, minimalist and light UI system, from the logo of the app and the promotional landing page to the system of icons and visual indicators that allow the user to easily discover a broad panorama on a story, with just a few clicks and in a smeemless way. We specially focused on the sharing process experience, since it's not only about reading news: it's also about spreading the word.

Based on users feedback, our improved UI allowed to significantly reduce the friction involved in the process of reading, evaluating and comparing different sources on a story. The metrics showed a positive impact of the UX implemented in the app, making the navigation flow more intuitive, easier to understand and faster for the user.