Collaborative Collections.
Curate your own reading, from top news sources.
Collecting recipes from your feed? Share your Collection with your family for Thanksgiving.
That Collection of recipes? Well it inspires your Today feed!
Your Own Curated Reading Experiences.
Shared with your favorite people.
Curate your own Collections.
Keep your contacts
in the loop.
Collections in Today Feed.
Only you see what you read.
I was an intern on News tasked to "create a feature that will add value to News+."
I owned Collaborative Collections and worked with teammates for feedback during daily critiques.
42% of the news 18-29 year olds consume is through social media.
Like Apple News, social media sites are news aggregators too. Are there ways we can take the best parts of socials and add it News+?
FIRST ITERATION
We love talking about the News. Highlight articles and iMessage in-app.
"Saving articles is not a core part of the News experience" according to Ricky Richards, my mentor. On top of that, few of the interactions and visuals in my proposal were native to Apple News, and the lift wasn't worth it.
SECOND ITERATION
Save articles in groups and collaborate on them with your friends and family.
Saved articles in Offline Mode
Offline Mode was a feature that was planned for the next iOS release. I partnered with Jay Robinson, Product Design, and Paul Young, Product, to propose that "Saved " should be included in Offline Mode and help the algorithm learn the types of articles that should be included in Offline Mode.
"Apple hates socials—we also already have 'Shared with you.' What additional value does this bring?" argued Wyatt Mitchell, Design Director of Services. And he's right. "Shared with You" is also owned by a team outside of the organization News is under.
THIRD ITERATION
According to News Analytics, users are more likely to read an article, and therefore subscribe, if someone they know sends it to them.
Utilize users' own inner network to circulate articles in News
Collaborative playlists as role model
Music has always been such a point of pride within Apple—with the iPod, iTunes Store, being legendary products. Music also sits under the same organization as News, and recently launched collaborative playlists.
"Still not sold…What value does this bring to the primary News+ experience?" said Emmet Smith, Manager of News Design. "The vast majority of our users stay on the Today feed tab."
FINAL ITERATION
Bringing Collections into the Today Feed.
Get articles in the right hands ASAP
When users create Collections, they are telling us what they want to read. That's prime information, especially in the news cycle. With Collections inspiring the Today feed, we get the right articles in the hands of those who we know want to read them
Follow-up & Reflection
Good Design is Good Storytelling.
An opportunity at Apple is every product designer's dream. Here, I was reminded, again and again, of the bar for visual aesthetics. I also learned that storytelling is not only a tool for presentation, but something that informs the design of a product. Stories uncover value. And without a good story, where does the value of a product lie?
News+ Food
After my internship, the News team carried on my designs, which inspired News+ Food, released Feb 2025.
