Iran international is a Persian language television channel broadcast by satellite to Iran, and is licensed in the United Kingdom to Global Media Circulating Ltd as an editorial news service. It currently exists as a mobile and desktop website and the main live news television channel.
The main objective is to produce designs for the entire Android app experience. The decision was made to only produce an Android app as, due to the nature of the app, Android would be the perfect marketplace given its lower regulations. The mission was to have an app that would use VPNs to access news even if there was a government lockdown in Iran. The app can hold various types of content such as live video, videos, pictures, news articles, podcasts, and live radio.
When approaching the design of the Android app, I looked at the current website experience to see what type of content was used and the types of layouts that I could integrate into the app..
At first, this was a challenge as the Farsi language reads completely differently from English, from right to left. This means that all apps designed are the total opposite of normal English design patterns. I later got used to designing in this method and adapted my style for this. It was great to put myself into another user's shoes and see it from a totally different viewpoint.
IWhen I approach a design problem or brief, I like to do in-depth market research on the product. In this case, the news field was a new market for me, so I conducted extensive research on all its competitors. This involved ranking different news apps with three different criteria: visuals, user interface, and clarity of information.
After researching many apps, I identified the top 5 that excelled in these criteria. By identifying these, I knew what a good user experience for a news app could be, and I brought these same features and design considerations into my designs. I also conducted extensive research on the Google Play Store to read user reviews and see what people liked and disliked about apps. This helped me identify what users were expecting from the app experience.
I then broke all of the best features down so we would know which features we could include to improve the overall experience. Please see below
When creating the user flow, I tried to keep in mind all the different types of content that I needed to integrate as well as the main interface structure. I considered that more information structures might be used in the future, so my approach allowed for this. I considered all the different states that a user might go through and all the touchpoints throughout the product pipeline.
When creating the wireframes, I used my user journey and the research I carried out to develop a great user experience that would create the ultimate news app. The user journey gave me the structure that I needed to follow for the architecture. This also allowed me to consider different scenarios when designing. The research played a significant role in my wireframe process as some of the features I researched were definitely included. I tried to make my wireframes follow most of the material design guidelines, so when I created the UI, it would be a simpler and easier transition.
When designing the UI, I started all my designs in English so the stakeholders and I could understand exactly what we were looking at. I also produced these in a Farsi version to showcase how it would look in the final build. This was useful as some character limits were different in each language, which allowed me to consider font spacing and line spacing. I used the material design guidelines for this app as it was only going to be on the Android platform. I felt this would be the best design language to use as I wanted to create the best experience for Android users.
When designing the video player, I used well-known competitors such as CNN and YouTube as references. These provided an indication of how users would want to interact with the players.
I decided to integrate the live scheduling inside the live video tab as it made sense to put them together since they reference each other in terms of content. For the live video player, this was more of an adaptation from the video player. I did this so the development would be quicker and for the user to have a similar experience.
When designing the radio controls, I used Apple Music as a reference for controls. I wanted users to interact with a music player that would work well, and since Apple Music is widely used, it was a great reference.
When designing the news feed, I had to consider all the different methods of content types that would be displayed. These consisted of text articles, images, videos, and podcasts. These content types combined, so all the different variations had to be considered.
When designing the app icon, I used the product logo and some of the branding guidelines to create a recognizable logo for its users. I produced this for all the different sizes required by the developer.
This is where the technical part comes in for design as the Arabic language is read from right to left so this meant to design everything in this way on be able to switch back to English if needed.
The final result was that the stakeholder was happy with the progress of the designs and work carried out. I only worked on this project for a month and a half before the budget got cut due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I tried to do as much as I could in that short time and feel I got it to a good place for handover. This project is potentially still ongoing as there are still a couple of things that need to be completed.
