Cascade Review
Roles
UI Designer, Visual designer, Front-end developer
Duration
November 2017 - April 2018
Tools
Adobe Creative Suite
Team
Content writers
The Challenge
The Cascade Review wanted to design a new product to bring unfiltered news from the Pacific Northwest (PNW). This product needed to be able to deliver their news in a clear, precise way that embodied the PNW spirit: nature, clarity and progress. Their target demographic comes from a diversity of backgrounds but are mostly non-tech consumers aged 40-65 living in the PNW.
Design: Concepts & Sketching
As they did not want to do additional user research for their product design, I used the company's data on their target market to shape the component's of the design.
I began this concept by undergoing affinity mapping, identifying themes and then using design thinking to brainstorm and prioritize features that needed to be included for the Cascade Review to reach their goals. I then started the design with some rough sketching and iterating the designs until landing on something that was simple, straight forward yet embodied the creativity of the PNW.
Design
The Cascade Review's audience is not advanced when it comes to tech. We need a simple layout that delivered their stories in a way that was easy to navigate but also modern and stylish to match the personality of the brand. We developed a single issue layout where the current issue's articles could be found directly under the intro banner video of the PNW.
We wanted a visual design that embodied the PNW that also allowed for easy user accessibility across several age demographics and ableness. So we chose a complementary color palette that allows for a stark contrast and clear visibility. We also picked a simple sans-serif typography and large font sizes all incorporating the blues and greens of the PNW.
Design: Iteration
We did not have the budget to do extensive user testing. So we have been using our reader base via surveys, comments and session replays to re-iterate our design driven by our HEART criteria. We have iterated on our design several times and continue to improve the design as a living piece of work.
Our current design has transformed to incorporate more traditional news UI that seems to be easier for our older demographic to maneuver. Including columned articles with descriptions and tags to identify genre.
First iteration:
Solution & Impact Overview
Our current iteration and solution includes multiple sections of articles. Including the current issue, popular articles and editor's blog. This layout is not as clean as I would like it to be, however it is simpler for our audience to understand and reach goals outlined in our HEART table.
