Wrn boards

Work on NDA Briefs Blog

BRIEF 8: WORLD RIGHT NOW

The future of the news is social, and the future of the reporter is us. When world news breaks, people flock to social networks to spread the word. World Right Now is an online tool that aggregates news stories from various social networks and content posted directly to WRN and creates dynamic feeds of content based around trending news stories all over the world.

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Brief [Client] WRN is game changing, disruptive, social media platform designed to provide discernible news related, usergenerated content via an innovative digital platform. WRN is designed as an antithesis to futile social media content that dominates most popular platforms, creating instead, a mature platform, where the stories that matter can be told by the people and for the people that are shaping our WORLD RIGHT NOW. The WRN concept will be delivered in two key stages starting with a unique, launch event, (The Time Capsule) unparalleled in its nature and secondly by providing the on-going platform (The Story Capsule) designed to be powered by aggregated user-generated, news content.

The creative brief is to bring this concept to life by designing the interface for the various aspects of this concept which comes in four stages. Pre-Event, Event, Post-Event and story capsule. The brief is to be delivered through mock ups which can be used to pitch to potential investors.

Market

Visual World Right Now Brand When researching possible asethetics and treatments for the world right now brand, I considered the following how the ciricle could be used as a metaphor for the world, typography letterforms of W, R, and N. I also looked into the visual qualities of connection as WRN is about bringing people and news together. I also explored how various othe tech start ups have branded themselves to ensure that I was creating some that was going to be disruptive.

Tweetping Central to the WRN concept is that all content is aggregated and viewed within a map based interface. Tweetping is an example of how a map has been used to visualise realtime twitter posts, however this is more of a visualisation tool than a content discovery tool.

Nokia Zoom Project Nokia offers an online for users to post news to a central portal from there nokia devices, a map based interface is not present but this representa an example of social news production. Although imagery is well used within the sites design it is hard to navigate and slow to use, not features a news site should employ. Additionally the site is used more as a marketing gimmick than a tool for content democracy.

User WRN only aims to capture a significant audience of the global social media market, WRN aims to target a minimum of 10% of this market which would equate to over 170 million users world wide, who are either contributors or consumers. There will be two types of user that engage with the platform, the consumer how uses the platform purely to read and interact with content and producers who are users who are creating the content for the platform, however there will be overlap between users roles.

Deliverables -

On going documentation on Blog A minimum of 5 submission boards World Right Now Brand Time Capsule Brand Brand Guidelines Pre-Event Website Event Website Post-Event Website Story Capsule Pitch Deck

BRIEF 8: WORLD RIGHT NOW

Pintrest’s Map Pins Pintrest launched a new view for there service which aggregates pins onto a map based on where they were published. This is similar to how WRN should function however WRN will be for news based content. Pintrest have opted to use a split screen interface in which content and the map are viewable simultaneously.

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Portoalegre A Portugeuse website has empolyed a map based interface and pins to gather content about attractions within it’s captial city. The major downfall of the website is that when zoomed out the sites is full of pins and the map is not visible, a pitfall I can aviod when designing the interface for WRN.

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Visual Con. World Right Now Brand

BRIEF 8: WORLD RIGHT NOW

Time Capsule Brand The Time Capsule brand is more of an emphermal brand which won’t be present for the logevitiy of the brand, so taking this into consideration the brand can be more playful and intresting and be more visually explicit rather than having to be concerned with it’s adaptibilty to a growing brand.

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World Right Now Interface I have explored a range of interface conventions which could employed into the WRN interface. The interface will need to employ familar conventions so that new users understand how to work the platform without having a steep learning curve.

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Strategy

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Pre Event Site Design The platform essentially exists in four parts, 3 parts of which form the ‘TimeCapsule’ service and one part which forms the ‘WRN News Portal’. The TimeCapsule platform is separate into three parts known as, Pre Event, Event and Post Event each of which require designing as separate entities but must also work together as a consistent service.

The Pre Event site is essentially a website which builds buzz around the launch of the new service which at this stage will not be live. This site require basic information about what the service is and how you can get involved and promote it.

This will be more a static, information based site with little interactivity apart sign up/registration as well sharing the site through existing social networks.

World Right Now Brand Development

Moving forward with the brand development I considered a more abstract approach to the logo marks, such as using dots or circles to symbolise both the clusters of people and the clusters of news story that will appear on the platform, however visually this won’t work when used as a small logo across the site. Secondily I considered using colour within the mark however this felt to child like for the brand.

Initally I explored the idea of using the circle to represent the earth and the world, however this felt weak as a brand mark and not very apparent. I then looked at using a semi colon to indicate time to emphasise that the platform is live and in real time however I don’t think this idea transistioned well into a logo.

I then explored the possibility of linlking these two ideas together however this made the logo feel cluttered and over complicated for a brand mark that needed to be instantly recognisable. This proved to be an intresting brand to work on as it was more about creating a symbol and mark that was distinctive than a brand that works across a range of media formats.

Event Site Design The second part of the TimeCapsule site is known as the event. This is essentially the first part of the platform that becomes live to the user. This is website which is essentially an online time capsule for users to upload, create or gather content into one time capsule online at this stage this is all the user can do. This site will essentially act as a place for this content to be stored and gathered as well as act as a profile page.

Post Event Site Design The final stage to TimeCapsule platform is known as a the post event, this is when all the users have uploaded content to their personal TimeCapsules and now all of there content will go live on one interactive map of the world. Everyone who has been involved in the Event or Pre Event stage there content will all site on the map of the world. The post event site is essentially a map landscape in which user can explore all of the content that has been uploaded over the period of ‘the event stage’.

Stage 6: News Portal The TimeCapsule platform is essentially a marketing tool to gather users and get people to upload content, it is referred to an event as it is an online event which is happening one time and people can involved in it. However the event leads to the service known singularly as ‘World Right Now’ an this is an open source news platform in which all of the news that is generated is created by it’s users and not traditional media outlets. This is why the TimeCapsule stage is needed to gather a number of user to launch this news platform as it can’t launch with no users.

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Development Con.

Pre Event Site Development

Time Capsule Brand Development

Initially I explored create a single page scrolling website or a single frame website it which content was overlayed over each other. We felt the single page scrolling was more effective as it’s more familiar to users.

For the Time Capsule brand I initally looked at literally presentation of the meaning however this gimicky and immature for the audience. I then explored more subtle reference to capsule, rather than time and timelines, this worked significantly better, the simple design incorporates well with the WRN brand and works well within a website.

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Development Con.

Post-Event site development

Story Capsule site development

Event site development

Most of the development around the post-event site centered around how the circles were going to be displaed on the map and how size and colour will used to indicate areas of high or low content. Additionaly how the maps transistions from the cirlces to actual content was also an area of focus as I tried bringing conten up at different levels of the map but ultimately at street level was the best palce to surface content.

The story capsule development focused heavily on how users will read the news and discover new content. Centeral to this was how users will view either content or the map or both at the same time.

The event site is essentially just a profile of content the map is not present at this stage so the layout was less about making the content fit with a map interface. I first tired a design with margins however full width content ultimately fit the concept better because it showed content connecting and fitting together.

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World Right Now & Time Capsule Brand The final brands for World Right Now and Time Capsule work together as essentially Time Capsule is a sub brand of WRN. The WRN brand is an reflective of the service itself in that the circles used within the logo mirror the circle used on the map within the interface of the website. The logo mark is adaptive and changes in sizes dependent on how stories trend and there popularity. Furthermore the logo can be used to reflect news from countries by bringing flag colours into the logo, additionally the mark can also be used for specific news stories or people or events in which images and complimentary colours are introduced into the logo.

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Pre Event Website The Pre-event site is all about getting people excited about the launch of the service, it is purely there to information people about what WRN and Time Capsule is. The encourage anticipation and excitment about the launch the website has an interactive map in which depicts how many people have signed up and where they are from, this creates a dialog what which are the top places in the world where sign ups are happening and encourage people to sign up in there area. The rest of the sites consists of an informative video about the brand and more details explanations about each stage leading up to the launch and how users can get involved.

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Event Website When the event website launches this is where every user is given a unqiue page on the service to upload there personal content that they want in the time capsule. Detailed bellow show how users can pull in content from all of there exisiting social media services as well as create new content specifically for the Time Capsule. When someone’s profile has been filled with content it is sitched together into a montage of there content which creates an interactive wall of images, videos, text and audio which can then be shared back to social networks to promote the Time Capsule to new users.

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Post Event Website After a period in which users have individually uploaded content to there personal profile this all then goes live onto the world map for anybody to explore. This then creates a world map populated with content from all over the world. Users can zoom into any location on the planet and see what content is posted there, it is essentially the profile page of the planet in which everyone’s content is stitched together for anybody to freely explore. The content is overaid over a map and is stitched together users can then click on specific pieces of content to see how posted it and view there profile or comment, like or share that specific of content.

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News Portal The Time Capsule process is now over and the services has a userbase once this has occured the story capsule or news portal launches which is the same concept as the time capsule but for live news happenign now.

This is world right now and it allows people to view news from all over the world in one view. Users can see what happening there local area and zoom right in or go and explore anywhere in the world. Users can also click into specific stories like the Syria Conflict and see an aggregated view of all the most popular content currently trending around that topic.

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