An app that delivers a bilingual business magazine for English & Chinese speakers
Project background
A close collaboration with Jarret Hardie, for Snapp. We were asked by The Economist to create a concept experience for a version of their Magazine for the Chinese and Western business markets. The project was lead by Rohit Agarwal, with the technical aspects lead by Jasper Morgan. I received Chinese design insights and feedback from Coy Chen.
This app became: The Economist Global Business Review
Requirements
• Human translated, dual language (Mandarin and English) experience, switchable throughout
• Optimised UI for one handed use on larger displays
• Optimised UI for one handed use on larger displays
• Not in Apple Newsstand
• Have own content distribution and user-controlled in-app library.
Design approach
The product required delivering an optimal reading and viewing experience, with fast, fluid and connected interactions. We rapidly defined, conceptualised and built a mobile magazine experience, iterating quickly based on feedback and collaboration.
In order to create a product which works in Western and Chinese markets, I did research on Chinese design, devices and usage. Throughout the experience there was floating action button allowing users to easily switch between languages.
As this app was aimed at business market, I use an email paradigm approach for list views to show new, read and unread articles. This afforded a familiar paradigm to read an issue over several sessions, while clearly knowing what you had read and what was next.
I worked on delivering more meaningful and connected transitions, especially for connecting content to section and time.
How we worked
Based on the business requirements and my research, I created many sketches to envisage the experience. I think rapidly created static concepts in Sketch and then animated concepts in Keynote to validate direction. I used InVision to prototype and test the flows. Along side this, I worked closely in with Jarret, receiving nearly daily app builds. To save dev time, I polished the functional prototypes UI in Xcode.
There were many iterations based on feedback and collaboration with the Snapp team and The Economist's internal stakeholders.
