app
Guardian Editions
The UK daily and Australian weekly editions of the newspaper, directly in your phone. Plus special editions, curated by the editors just for Guardian Editions readers.
→ GOAL
→ OUTCOME
It’s October 2019, the Guardian has just launched the Daily app redesign. Boris Johnson is now PM after Theresa May resigned in July and Maleficient and Joker have just been released in cinemas.
The Guardian’s business strategy is based on the expansion of the reader revenue beyond the UK market.
Transform the Guardian Daily into an app that holds multiple editions and launch an Australian-specific product.
TIMELINE
→ Phase 1 (March-October 2019): Re-design of the UK Daily Edition (DE) app and launch in all iOS and Android platforms.
→ Phase 2 (October 2019 - October 2020): Launch of AUS-specific product and Special Editions.
TEAMS INVOLVED
→ Editions Huddle
→ Editorial (UK + AUS)
→ Design + UX
→ Apps
→ Ophan (metrics)
→ Editorial Tools
→ User help
→ Acquisitions
→ Retention
→ Subscriptions & Contributions
→ Digital reader revenues
→ Brand & Awareness
→ Oliver (in-house marketing agency)
ROLE: Visual designer
RESPONSIBILITIES:
→ Guerrilla testing alongside the senior UX designer.
→ Deliver materials for testing.
→ Deliver handover specs to the software engineers and review PRs and bug fixes.
→ Cover card design for special editions like “Edition Earth” and “Best of a Bad Year”.
→ Create a visual language to differentiate special limited editions from the UK Daily and Australia Weekend editions.
The Australia Weekend launch went well with acquisitions during the marketing campaign (26th October - 22nd November) 1.6x above target with the base of Australian Digital Subscribers growing by over 20% since early October (over 2,000 new AUS subscribers since launch).
Activities surrounding the launch of Edition Earth (the first Special Edition within the app) also had success with over 5,000 new Digital Subscribers added in the month long climate moment (5th October onwards), a 20% increase on the previous 4 weeks.
Also, almost 30% of Digital Subscribers signed into the Editions app in the week after launch, the highest usage figure since the original launch of the Daily in October 2019.
L to R: UK Daily, AUS Weekly, “Edition Earth” and “Best of a bad” year.
L: UK daily and AUS weekly cover cards.
→ AUSTRALIA WEEKEND
Why did we decide to push a weekly (and not daily) edition in Australia?
1) UK is the only market with a daily print version
2) Guardian Weekly is a print product available in 3 editions: UK, Australia, US
3) Australia and US have their own Guardian offices, with their own editors and their own web edition.
There was an appetite for a product in the Australian market and we had the resources to curate a weekly edition.
→ SPECIAL EDITIONS
→ EDITION SWITCH
L: Daily app.
R: Editions app with new edition switch.
R: special edition cover cards. Using a frame and highlighting text for the special editions allowed us flexibility in the system and differentiation between products.
Making special editions available in the app allowed us to re-use content we know works well (ophan) and resurface it in key moments in the year.
It also allows us to have another bonus feature for people to subscribe.
By adding an icon to the header, we managed to keep the switch obvious but without adding too much noise.
The icon in the switch was the same one we used for the new app icon, since we were transitioning from Daily to Editions. This allowed us to integrate the concept of the editions onto the switch.
It was key to keep the menu for sections and editions separate, as we learnt in the user testing sessions. Adding a new icon (rather than reusing the burger menu on the right) would allow us to do so without hiding the switch.
HUDDLE TEAM
Director of Digital Reader Revenues: Juliette Laborie
Senior Delivery Manager: Huw Prior
Head of Digital subscriptions and Membership: Charles Minty
Group Product Manager: David Blishen
Agile Scrum Manager: Shraddha Pande
Engineering Manager: Yusuf Faraji, Grahame Oakland
Engineering: James Miller, Philip McMahon, Jean Lauliac, Mohammad Haque
Design: Alex Breuer, Ana Pradas
UX Design & Research: Paul Lamey, Priscilla Melo, Aoife Corbett
Editorial Production: Katy Vans
Special Editions Editor: Mark Rice-Oxley
Digital Marketing Manager: Sherri Jordan
User Help Manager: Andrew Findlay