Introduction

Displayed elements and information are a part of my product development involvement on the Blic website. The business section I'm showcasing here is partially implemented but is very dear to me, and I'm immensely proud of the work we have accomplished.

Objectives

• Improve content exploration within the Business section.

• Establish a consistent and visually appealing design system.

• Introduce features relevant to the target audience, such as "Listen to News" and a "Ticker" displaying stocks, market, and financial data.

Research and Discovery

• Examine extensive user feedback to understand the needs, preferences, and pain points of audience.

• Analyzed user behavior through website analytics to identify areas for improvement.

• Researched industry best practices and competitors to gather insights into successful design approaches.

Design Strategy

Looking at the 4 categories of user flow in terms of structure and complexity, we can see that most news content applications fall into the Consumption category, characterized by a simple and random flow.

What does this mean? It means that users don't have to go through complex processes like banking applications; the flow is rather straightforward: see news, open news, read. What might further describe the flow in such products is the random path through content, i.e., random flow. This affects several important guidelines in UI design and approaches to shaping UX. Random flow is unpredictable because someone in the same session might read news about the local economy immediately after going to global news about cryptocurrencies, for instance. This directs UX efforts to focus on content discovery and flexibility, that is, the accessibility of consuming it.

Content Exploration

• Thematic Grouping: Implemented a thematic grouping strategy to organize content, allowing users to explore related business topics seamlessly.

• Introduced story trails that connect related articles in a sequential manner, allowing users to follow a narrative thread and explore in-depth coverage of specific events or topics.

• Leveraged visual storytelling elements, such as infographics and timelines, to enhance engagement and comprehension of complex business narratives.

Design System

• Motion Design: Integrated subtle motion design elements for a more dynamic and engaging user experience, without compromising page load times.

• Microinteractions: Incorporated microinteractions to provide users with subtle feedback, enhancing the overall usability and interactivity of the website.

• Adaptive Color Palette: Utilized an adaptive color palette that adjusts based on content, creating a visually cohesive experience while maintaining readability.

New Features

Personalized Dashboards: Introduced personalized dashboards, allowing users to curate their own business news feeds and track specific industries or companies. AI-driven Recommendations: Implemented AI-driven recommendation algorithms to suggest relevant articles and financial data based on individual user preferences and behavior.