Problem
As part of its coverage of the 2016 U.S. Elections, the CNN Politics unit wanted to go beyond the headlines and take a closer look at the data behind the election. Things like polling numbers, ad spending, and travel itineraries can get past the campaign promises and tell a different side of the story. But how to present those stories in a compelling way?
The other MASSIVE challenge facing us is that we had to design, develop, and ship the app within 3 months to meet a sponsorship requirement.
Goal
Create a mobile app that tells stories from the campaign trail that highlights data in a visually interesting way.
Process
To help us generate a bunch of ideas quickly, we conducted a Design Studio and had folks from Product Management, Business Development, Editorial, and Engineering contribute so we could see this from all angles. Getting insights from everyone on the team helped us define where we wanted to go, and more importantly, where we didn’t.
One of the sketches from the Design Studio session
Leading the review portion of the Design Studio
After we compiled the findings from the Design Studio, I teamed up with a visual designer and started to work through potential directions that the app could take. Any and all directions had to answer one simple question: “Who is winning the presidential race right now?”
We created 3 potential directions and presented them to our executive team. After some deliberation, we decided to follow the “Digest” approach. This would present a more curated, shorter experience that users could rely on every day to stay in the know.
From there, we began to build out prototypes to get a better feel of the flow of the app. We also partnered with our engineering team to stay in sync as they built out a custom CMS for our editorial team. You can see a prototype here:
Results / Next Steps
We did it! We hit our 12 week deadline and released the app in the Spring of 2016. The app was nominated for a Webby award in 2017.