Article Recirculation

Project Overview:

Designed a mobile-only article with recirculation feed for the "VICE NextGen" platform, ensuring the feed immediately follows truncation.

The content types includes: Carousel Story, Video Story, Video Artice Card, Shortform and Longform Article card

We've also conducted user testing for the "Carousel Story Card" with Ballpark, a platform to capture high-quality feedback on product questions, marketing copy, designs and Figma prototypes

Role:

Product Designer

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User Testing: Recirculation, Carousel Card

Research Plan

In an attempt to convert users to more content to increase retention we conducted user testing for the "Carousel Story Card".

With the following in mind:

- Test usability as well as sentiment around a new article card type on VICE.com.
- Gauge whether or not this type of component is something our audience sees as adding value to their reading experience
- Identify potential pain points and areas of friction that may deter users from using the unit.
- Improve design and functionality based on feedback
- Test our proposed design solution to evaluate usability and efficacy. 

‍Learning approach‍

- Unmoderated testing via Ballpark (VICE Audience users) including a mix of tasks (to test prototype usability) and questions (to test assumptions). 

Participant requirements

- Aged 20 - 60 or older
- 49 of 104 participants completed the test 

Summary Report:

This report summarizes the findings from our user testing on the recirculation unit for Carousel Story on VICE.com. The research aimed to understand users' experiences, gather insights for improving the overall unit. The research involved testing Figma prototypes and collecting feedback from 49 participants that completed the test out of 104.

Key Results

- 61.8% of participants, Clear that this unit is identifiable as a carousel of stories
- 11.8% , the function appears unclear
- 11.8%, appears as an advertisement
- 10.5%, single article
-4%, other

Upon interacting with the unit - Generally positive

Users were inclined to click through the carousel and read the articles or compelled to just read the headlines/each card

Users found the unit to easy to navigate through the stories
- 55.1% of participants were able to open and close the modal as expected while 44.9% could not
- Majority could see a way to open it, the icon to find more info wasn't clear or that the icon didn't function as intended

Overall participants felt that interactions with the other icons were splitsome text
- 59.2% found it easy
- 40.8% found it difficult - unclear to users that most of the components in the modal were inactive and the icons didn't feel intuitive either
- Overall participants felt neutral with the modal "More Information" as well as the overall design

Next Steps: Pre-Launch Design Tests

Create and test other recirculation units on Ballpark

- Article Truncation
- Recirc: Article Page
- Recirc: Shortform
- Recirc: Longform
- A/B testing with the other recirculation units against one another some text
- What insights?some text
- Track interactions
- Track subsequent scroll amounts
- Track interactions on article page recirculation units
- Track ad load metrics
- Run a series of variant tests
- Trial truncation in specific contexts: Mobile, in-app browsers mobile, Desktop (check in on scroll drop off numbers)

Post-Launch Development Tests

- Does recirc perform better w/ or w/o truncation? Does truncation placement effect recirc clickthrough

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The other content types:

Long/Shortform Article Cards, Video Story/Article Cards