News Consumption Evolved

News Consumption Evolved

Hellings, P.J.

Vermeeren, A.P.O.S. (mentor)
Mulder, I.J. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

Master of Science Design for Interaction

2010-04-29

In our digital age the news world is in turmoil. With the Internet news media became interactive and collaborative which has widespread implications on traditional business models. Today everyone can contribute by posting content online, ranging from pictures to videos and from comments to complete stories. Journalists are no longer the gate keepers of the news, the public can now decide for itself what news is relevant for them and what is not. Traditional media are struggling to survive the decreasing advertisement revenues and print circulation. In their search for new business models they have a difficult task of finding new ways of making money on the Internet, where almost anything is, or seems to be, free. Moreover, simply putting old news formats online is no longer sufficient. Adolescents and young adults in particular have radically different ways of communicating and interacting with information. They even have different ideas about what news is and the role it serves. The mere notion of what news is needs to be redefined. This thesis describes how a new generation consumes news in a new manner. It shows why traditional media are not sufficient anymore and how Internet and mobile phones are becoming the most important media for them. Since the media landscape is changing in a rapid pace only recent work is used, ranging from reports from American and Dutch journalism organizations to scientific research reports. Several explorative interviews with potential users were conducted in order to place the findings into context. The conclusions from the interviews as well as the literature study were used to define the research questions, supporting the project goal: Conduct a context mapping study in order to understand the ‘news’ needs of young adults in the broadest sense of the word (i.e. world news, news on topics of interest and news from the social graph). Use these findings to design an innovative product concept which improves the total news experience of today’s youngsters. The research questions were used as a basis for this context mapping study, in which eight young adults participated in a qualitative study. The outcomes of the study led to a design model in which three design requirements emerged: ‘Anywhere, anytime, anyhow’ ‘Personalize’ and ‘Low effort.’ These are supported with design directions as ‘depth’ ‘cross media’ ‘social network’ and ‘suggestions.’ The final concept is envisioned within two scenarios, showing how two fictive users stay updated and gain depth on their personal news sources on their mobile as well as on their computer. As an outcome of this project, these scenarios were used to evaluate the developed design model and chosen directions. In general, the scenarios were welcomed positively and they would improve the current news experience of the participants. Improvements can be made on managing sources to stay updated on, navigation within the news experience and gaining depth by acquiring automated overviews on specific topics. It is recommended for Vodafone to continue with research and development on this subject. There is a lot to gain within the young adults’ news experience. This thesis shows that young adults do not search for new solutions themselves, but would like to have them. There lies the opportunity for Vodafone: to offer an improved news experience. Vodafone could offer a news agent as proposed within this theses, which could intensify the change in the world of news for consumer as well as for the content providers.

news
vodafone
young adults
context mapping

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:04b8ffea-adbe-4b34-bd05-1315f677a24c

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2010 Hellings, P.J.