AJ+ Design Research Projects
In 2017, Al Jazeera’s San Francisco product development team conducted a series of research projects that we dubbed Project Blue Bottle – to help us determine the product roadmap for the AJ+ app, which had plateaued and declined after three years.
We hosted several workshops in our San Francisco office, and with students at the University of Michigan’s Human Computer Interaction (HCI) program. We studied our users’ behavior, market trends for digital media, the AJ+ audience, and the phenomenon of declining trust in US media.
Most of this is culled from pieces of final presentations, but hopefully gives the sense of the scope and focus of design research at Al Jazeera.
My Role
Design Manager
User Research – Mobile News Consumption
We began the project of reevaluating our mobile presence with an in-depth analysis of the state of news media.
We examined the issues facing the industry, how mobile platforms have been successfully adopted by competitors, circumstances unique to Al Jazeera and AJ+, and our successes and missteps thus far.
Internal Workshops
We hosted a series of workshops with our editorial, social, and product staff, to brainstorm ideas on how to evolve our mobile presence, address some of the issues inherent to digital media, and better deliver on AJ+ strengths and brand promise.
Heuristic Evaluation of AJ+ App
For this one, we hosted a workshop with students from the University of Michigan Human Computer Interaction program, to evaluate and critique our then-current app, using Jakob Nielsen’s 10 heuristics for user interface design.
UMich Brainstorm
A workshop hosted a workshop with University of Michigan HCI students, to brainstorm ideas for new features for the AJ+ app.
Our Audience – AJ+
This is the predecessor to the project, a few months prior. We studied the AJ+ audience via data insights, surveyed, and interviewed our audience, to to inform decisions for the product roadmap.
