So here's the challenge

In 2016, we had an election that left us very emotional, and very confused. News outlets were constantly releasing articles and new information on the two candidates that were constantly in the news. By the time we had a winner, the American population found themselves in this state of frustration with the information they were receiving and the lack of space they had to express their thoughts about it.

 

In the fall of 2017, as part of a group project, we decided to work to find a solution to this very pressing issue. We created Yoke- a news app that would give basic information and provide a space to talk about it. We all had separate roles within the group. Mine was creatively focused.

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What's the why?

Millennials make up an increasingly large amount of the American population and they also happen to be our future. As millennials ourselves we wanted to find a way to provide for this age group. We started out by conducting interviews and asking about of all the places these people consume their news from. Two popular sources were online commenting portals, forums, and the newspapers themselves. From there we conducted a competitive analysis with some of the strong players in the field- Reddit and a New York Times article. We evaluated the flow and presentation of information on both and found that there was a lot going on. From there I started brainstorming some early stage ideas of how this looks on a screen.

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Solution

The app started out with prototypes on paper that we tested with users. Then it was created into mockups through Sketch and tested in InVision. The idea here is to make it as simple as possible for the user. Unlike the competitors that were evaluated earlier on, I wanted to make the flow and aesthetic as simple as it could possibly be. I wanted this to feel separated from the news experience so I also created a fresh, new branding suite with bright colors. The app was eventually called Yoke- a combination of woke and (egg) yolk since many people during testing mentioned that they prefer to find out about the news in the morning.

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Results

Throughout the process we interviewed over 100 people, constantly had run throughs with our audience and were constantly talking about their news experience. In December 2017, we entered the app into the New School Impact Incubator- a social impact based incubator and were accepted as the only completely undergrad team. We were 1 of 11 teams and got the chance to develop the app even further throughout the semester.