NEWSQUEST - Roberta Tardio

NEWSQUEST — News that moves fast, just like you.

NewsQuest is a mobile news app built for Gen Z, turning fragmented headlines into verified, interactive stories that inform and engage.

Timeframe:

May 2024 – Jan 2025

My role:

Lead Designer

Client:

Group Project Work 
(TAG – Master UI Design)

Challenge

Design an app that helps young users navigate today’s complex information landscape in a critical and conscious way. The challenge was to combine news aggregation with fact-checking tools, creating an experience that is trustworthy, clear, and accessible.
The goal was to engage Gen Z—a generation used to getting information from everywhere, but increasingly looking for a reliable place to go deeper and make sense of what really matters.

Approach

The entire project followed a UX-driven approach, with a strong focus on understanding the context and real user needs. We kicked off the discovery phase with a UX Strategy Canvas, which helped us define goals, key audiences, and the value proposition, laying the foundation for a design process rooted in clarity, consistency, and user experience.

My Role

NewsQuest is a group project developed during the UI Design Master at Talent Garden, by a team of seven: Angela, Carlotta, Andrea, Marco, Francesca, Matilde, and myself. I took on the role of Lead Designer, with a specific focus on UI, leading the visual style, designing the component system and interfaces, and ensuring overall design consistency.

Design Process

Design Discovery

Our design process starts here: with a deep understanding of the context and the real needs of the users.

What emerged from the Design Discovery

From the analysis of the brief, competitors, user needs, and project constraints, the following key points emerged:

What we need to solve

Key Problem

Young users consume news in a disorganized way, through fragmented and often unreliable sources. They struggle to distinguish facts from opinions and to navigate complex topics, often losing context.

User Goal

Access reliable content, explore news critically, and understand complex topics through clear, verified, and easy-to-use tools.

Business Goal

Promote transparent, responsible journalism through an engaging digital product that raises awareness on social and environmental issues.

Main Constraints

Short attention spans, low interest in long-form content, and limited trust in traditional media. The product needed to be credible, easy to use, and engaging for a Gen Z audience.

Design Opportunities

Build a modular, interactive experience that combines source aggregation, fact-checking, and reimagined long-form content, enhanced by micro-interactions, thematic filters, and badges to boost engagement and user involvement.

Functionality

From the analysis of the brief, competitors, user needs, and project constraints, the following key points emerged:

Custom Home

A thematic, multi-format feed featuring authoritative and interactive content, designed to provide diverse perspectives and enhance understanding.

Visible and transparent fact-checking

Each news item includes a reliability badge and a link to a verification sheet detailing the validation process and sources. Users can also view the same news from multiple sources.

Thematic Paths and Interactive Long Reads

A section dedicated to complex topics, featuring extended articles redesigned with modular navigation, integrated infographics, and multimedia content to keep users engaged and support deeper understanding.

Search (Ask AI)

A space where users can ask questions on specific topics. The AI provides clear summaries, backed by reliable sources, and suggests related thematic paths for further exploration.

Profile with learning tracker

A personal area that displays progress, read articles, earned badges, and personalized suggestions to explore topics of interest.

UX & UI Design

After understanding the context and real user needs, we translated insights into clear flows, intuitive interfaces, and a coherent, accessible, and data-driven visual experience.

Accessibility & Inclusion

To ensure an equitable experience for all users, the platform adheres to WCAG 2.1 AA standards.

We implemented strong color contrast, clear typography, and full keyboard navigation. The interface uses Inclusive Sans, a Google Font designed to enhance legibility for neurodiverse users and individuals with reading difficulties.

The color palette was built using a tone-based system, where hues were calibrated to maintain consistent luminance values across the UI. This ensures visual harmony, coherent component states, and a clear hierarchy—without compromising accessibility.

What we improved after testing

To validate usability and clarity, we conducted qualitative testing with a user from our target audience (Gen Z).

Although the overall flow was intuitive, one critical area of confusion emerged: the fact-checking label.

Originally, its function wasn’t immediately clear. Based on user feedback, we introduced a contextual “i” icon next to the label. When clicked, it now triggers a tooltip explaining what fact-checking means and how sources are verified. This micro-interaction significantly increased perceived trust and clarity.

We also refined UX writing throughout the platform to make tone, actions, and content structure more engaging and digestible—especially for short attention spans and mobile usage.