BBC News Locust 2020 upsurge interactive
Project Brief
Develop an explainer piece on the 2020 locust upsurge in Africa and the Middle East. The 2020 locust plague made headlines as the worst in decades. The editorial brief was to develop a fun, informative captivating piece that would attract younger audiences.
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User Needs
Younger audiences want to consume news in formats that are novel and captivating.
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My Role
The project was a collaboration with a remote team of journalists, visual artists, developers and a project manager based in BBC’s London headquarters. I built on the wireframe provided to develop the user interface, structuring the content to facilitate a clear and linear narrative storytelling format, using visual hierarchy and the similarity principle to create an intuitive user flow when reading the article. We used animation and scrollmation techniques to add playfulness that facilitated increased engagement with the audiences. The interactive was designed to cater for mobile users and those who used browsers with limited functionality, providing core content to fall back on.
The piece was published in 7 BBC World Service websites – Africa English, Amharic, Tigrinya, Urdu, Afaan Oromoo, French and Swahili languages.
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Design Process
We assessed news coverage of the locust upsurge and analysed the formats of these presentations in brainstorming sessions. From existing user data, we identified popular formats among younger audiences.
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Findings
Most reporting on the issue featured the standard video and article page formats that would be dull for younger audiences. User data from a different BBC project had revealed the popularity of scrollytelling formats.
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Design Solution
We adapted the popular scrollmation format that had proved popular among younger audiences in previous presentations. We also included animation for the data visualisation and vibrant infographics and maps to appeal to the youth.
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Design deliverables included wireframes done in Sketch, a clickable prototype in Marvel, a handoff document on Marvel and UI assets.
