ABC Future News

ABC News redefined the way news is presented, proving that it doesn’t have to be bland. The new design embraces colour, approachable shapes, a cleaner layout and personalised areas, making the news more engaging and accessible. ABC News received significant investment from all parts of the business, making stakeholder involvement crucial to the project’s success. The team designed and tested new experiences to address key opportunities, supporting diverse stories, building deeper relationships, and mitigating news avoidance. Several rounds of design, testing and refinement led to engagement boosting tools: vertical video, live updates, and curated news cards with ‘topic-led’ onwards journeys.

With ABC News being the biggest ABC brand, there was significant investment from all parts of the business. Therefore, closely involving senior stakeholders was crucial to this project’s success. Stakeholders participated in workshops to identify key opportunity areas to address the challenges. These included how we might support a diversity of stories, build deeper relationships, mitigate news avoidance, and further retain our loyal audience. Each opportunity area was designed, prototyped and tested with audiences to gauge understanding and desirability. This led to revised design templates and the creation of design principles to guide ABC News into the future.

The redesigned homepage and article pages featuring a new colour palette, modern UI, larger interactive content cards and vertical video storytelling felt more engaging and immersive to our underserved audience. The new colour palette also contributed to creating a calmer and more readable news experience. New content signposting features such as labels, read time and the ‘For You’ feed facilitated quick decision making and consumption for those with limited time. More broadly, this unified, digital-first approach refreshed the site, broadcast, and social designs, cohesively aligning the brand, resulting in an increase in digital news consumption.

Key design features: •Use of colour: The addition of colour adds diversity and interest. Colour adds meaning, differentiates content, and emphasises updates, making the news modern and approachable. •User needs-based curation: Highlights content for lower news consumers to counter news avoidance. Delivers content that meets user needs: context, learning, perspectives, inspiration, and positive news. •More diverse set of components: Enhances storytelling, highlights importance, showcases video/audio, and makes the page dynamic and interactive. •A swipeable personalised news feed: ‘For You’: Designed to deliver the most relevant news in a modern and engaging experience, to suit readers’ tastes. Alongside new designs and features, the team created a set of Design Principles for future guidance: •Provides Focus: Audiences value their time and attention. Creating experiences that are quick to understand and complete, with a well-organised visual hierarchy, respects their shifting focus. •Familiar, not faceless: Approachable, personalised, and comfortable for all Australians. Recognisably ABC, with room for expression to foster lasting news relationships. •Active and immersive: Engaging, current, and live news. Interactive moments encourage conversation and participation. •Storytelling by design: Adapts to the story, is visually diverse, and meets the need to inform, motivate, connect, and understand the world.