Would Jessica use this? How to beautify products for your audience
Yes, my name is Jessica. No, I am not referring to myself in the third-person with this blog post title.
‘Jessica’ is the name of the persona that motivates every development decision for “#ThisisTucson,” a brand of news products created within The Arizona Daily Star for mothers under 35 years old in Tucson, Arizona.
After countless empathy interviews, Irene McKisson, Becky Pallack, and the rest of the team behind #ThisisTucson knew what Jessica’s problem was, and it boiled down to these conclusions:
Jessica was really busy. She didn’t have the time or urge to read a 1,000-word article on the best summer camps in Tucson. It was hard to find fun and affordable activities for her children.
Testing solutions was the next step for the team, but it wasn’t just stories and sketches the team was interested in showing mothers. Another integral part of the user experience was finding the perfect design.
To paraphrase Irene and put it bluntly, Jessica wasn’t interested in using something ugly.
All design elements of the #ThisisTucson native app and its related products were intentional. The logo uses mint green and copper colors because they are trendy and representative of the Southwest. The hyperlinks appear in the same mint green color for conformity. Comment sections underneath stories were replaced with emoji reaction buttons because Jessica texted with emojis all the time, and if she wanted to sift through comments, she would go to Facebook.
Speaking of emojis, do you know how passionate Tucsonans are about cactuses? Especially cactus characters with cute faces? Very passionate, it turns out. So the team designed different cactus emojis and stickers, in addition to Tucson-specific emojis like “A” Mountain, a Sonoran hot dog and the Hotel Congress sign.
Right now, the color scheme of #ThisisTucson on its Facebook page and website has transitioned to an autumn palette of yellow, orange, purple and red because the arrival of fall in Arizona is a big deal and millennials will be the first ones to tell you so.
Also, the perfect amount of negative space and the effect it can have is underestimated. Having too much white space can make a page look bare, while not having enough can make it look cluttered and busy.
Take a moment to think of those Instagram influencers who perfectly curate their feed to look clean, neat, and use the same color palette in all of their posts. It looks attractive, right? You want to keep scrolling down that beautiful feed for longer than you probably want to admit. The idea of that aesthetically-pleasing design — design that both attracts people and serves a purpose — is what news organization should be trying to translate into their own products.
Once a product is built, you don’t stop testing design features and user experience, either. The #ThisisTucson team uses Jessica as their compass with every new idea, from design to content decisions.
Would Jessica read this story? Does Jessica want more content sections in the app’s menu bar? Is she be willing to pay money for this product or does she want it for free?
Journalism can be much more than writing daily news articles. One of its core values is to serve your community, in some way, shape, or form. When we create a product that not only helps people in their everyday lives, but also makes them want to keep reading and seeking information about the world around them, we have done our jobs.
