This summer, we invited young tech enthusiast for a co-creation process to prototype news futures that meet current challenges. What if the news adopted to your feelings in real time? Or what if cinematic mini-games gave you context to global conflicts? Learn about this and more in this summary of our co-creative design sprint.
BACKGROUND
In July 2023, IN/LAB organised a five-day design sprint called News 2030 in collaboration with Schibsted’s News Destination Engineering team (NDE). We invited a group of eight young adults (ages 22-25) with a passion for design and/or technology who wanted to shape future news products. We worked in a co-creation process to develop new and futuristic product ideas that could solve one of the following news media challenges identified through IN/LAB research with Järvaveckan Research:
People avoid news due to the frustration it brings when consumed.
People feel like news outlets report on war and conflicts happening outside of Europe in an unbalanced way.
People feel like the news reporting on muslims and residents in vulnerable areas contributes to a negative view among the general public/and or in the social debate.
WHAT WE DID
The group was split into three teams to develop their ideas, and followed a program in 5 steps:
Introduction to the problems
Ideating speculative solutions
Concept development
Prototyping
Presenting concepts & prototypes
To get their ideation going, the groups was introduced to product development and AI approaches through inspirational lectures from Aftonbladet, NDE and Schibsted Futures Lab. During the week we held workshop sessions where the group ideated solutions to the identified challenges. The groups then developed interactive digital prototypes, with Schibsted coaches and journalists giving feedback and support during the process. The group also tested their prototypes on users.
THE PROTOTYPES
News2030 led to the creation of three speculative prototypes that reimagine the format of news consumption. Below, you can read more about them and see how they work!
SentiSense What if the news adapted to your emotions in real time? SentiSense is a feature that analyses the user's real-time reaction to news to continually adjust the content and enhance the user's news experience. AI technology embedded in phones tracks biochemical reactions from the user through facial analysis and eye tracking to understand what creates negative reactions. The article’s language, tone, and angle can then be dynamically adjusted to deliver the news in the best way for each user.
GlobeSpec What if you could play your way through news perspectives covering war and conflict? GlobeSpec offers AI-generated cinematic mini-games that present different narratives in the unfolding of a conflict. Using AI, news articles, opinion pieces, and discussion forums on global conflicts are scanned to identify perspectives on recent news events. Generative AI then creates games depicting events from these perspectives. Users can play through the events, delving deeper into the conflict and different viewpoints to gain a more balanced understanding. GlobeSpec is integrated into existing news apps. This solution addresses the problem that people feel like news outlets report on certain wars and conflicts in an unbalanced way.
News Sense What if the news came with your own conversational avatar? News Sense is an integrated feature within a news app that allows the user to engage in video chats with their own personalised AI news avatar. When a user reads a news article, they can also start a video chat with an avatar that can be customised to their liking. The user can have a conversation with the avatar about the news, and it quickly answers questions in a personalised manner. Also, the avatar's storytelling style can evoke empathy and emotions that may otherwise be difficult to convey. This solution addresses the problem of frustration when consuming news, providing more clarity and understanding.
NEW QUESTIONS
The News2030 program and prototypes opened up for a lot of new questions in and beyond our team. These include but are not limited to:
Senti Sense)
How (hyper)personalised should we make news content for individual users?
Can we make people more susceptible to information and facts in the news by appealing to emotions or values?
Globe Spec
How can/should we cover different media narratives from different parts of the world? How might this strengthen trust among a more globalised group of news consumers?
How can we use existing or emerging technologies to showcase narratives?
News Sense
How much support or help should we offer users in their news consumption?
Do users want to "meet" a journalist or themselves in their news consumption?
FEEDBACK
We received positive feedback from the News 2030 participants who expressed that the experience was inspiring and made them develop new skills. For some, it opened their eyes to the news media industry as a possible future career path.
“News 2030 was so rewarding and I learned so much, both on tech and the news media but mostly how an idea can be created from small post it notes to an almost complete product.” (News 2030 participant)
The Schibsted team also seemed happy with News 2030 and the solution concepts – and not least, they wanted to continue working with co-creation!
“It was valuable and fun. We should definitely do more of these [design sprints] and continue co-creating with younger people.” (NDE team member)
TEAM Belenn Bekele, Community Researcher, IN/LAB
Molly Grönlund Müller, Community Researcher, IN/LAB
Maxim Kejzelman, Product Manager, NDE
Niclas Ramström, Product Designer, NDE
Filip Misztal, Engineering Manager, NDE
LINKS
Project documentation (in Swedish)