Finnish #1 news reader
The assignment came to Qvik in 2014, designing user interface for news reader app for Finnish Broadcasting Company - Yle. The market was and still being swarmed with many mobile news reader. In order to be different and catering for Finnish market, the app UX is centred around news topic customisation. Topics of interest are heavily customisable via "slider": in traditional settings screen and in the end of every news article. So each user got a unique dose of content depends on his/her preferences.
As part of the design team, I was responsible for the looks and feels of the app. Building the UI to accommodate dense information presentation, and emphasise the ease of interested topics customisation.
Simple yet robust design solution
Article content was considered the most important part of the app UI, therefore ornaments were either axed or kept at minimal to leave room for meaningful information. Simple colour combination of black on white was used extensively.
Back in 2014 when design system or design language was still a relatively new idea. There wasn't many companies who realise the fact that their app is an important part of company's perceived image, and visual assets weren't designed to be scaled or used anywhere else outside the app. Yet often times app UI wasn't following or compatible with already existed company brand identity.
In this project, I had started with an enhanced version of a design spec which was used to communicate with developers. From there thing started to evolve, rules of colour, design grids, typefaces, iconography were introduced and standardised. Our effort in those early days had helped to create a solid structure for the app development in the later years.
Incorporating brand color palette into app UI
Typography
Simple grids & gaps size spec
Reception and success metrics
Over a year since inception, the app was downloaded for over 230,000 times. 140 millions push notification were sent. Users have already made more than 5.8 million impressions for around 130,000 news topics.
Yle Uutisvahti was awarded for the best consumer product design in Grand One 2015 award.
