FRAME Local News
Created For You, By You
KEYWORDS
Hannah Swart
Flora Hollingworth
Bryn Rhoads
SUMMARY
We approached this project with the intention of helping FRAME increase their GenZ audience and improve their platform. We believe that Frame has some untapped potential, and we recommend that they incorporate a local news approach. Local content is something that we are missing with news giants. Our research methods include secondary research, stakeholder interviews, competitive analysis, prototyping, and testing. During our interview process, we had thoughtful conversations with a fashion trend analyst, a strategist, a magazine editor; along with other users of the FRAME website. During these conversations, we found that the general consensus among the genz audience is that they want to see who is telling the story, why they are telling the story, and where the news is coming from.
challenge
Perhaps one of the most challenging parts of this project was pivoting from one idea to another. Our initial idea was centered around changing the aesthetics of FRAME website. After receiving feedback on our midterm presentation, we found that the creator of FRAME is more interested in how we can expand on our idea of balancing local content with worldwide news content. This is when we decided to pivot to focusing on local news. While making our prototypes, we were still able to play around with different aesthetics and layouts, and test which ones appealed to our users the most. Another big challenge for us was hearing back from the hundreds of journalists and creators we reached out to. We realize that establishing connections with people takes time. By focusing on our interactions with a few people, we were able to establish meaningful relationships that FRAME can further.
Outcome
In order to show how to incorporate local news into the FRAME site, we made three prototypes, and tested how users interact with our layout and selection of stories. Our idea is based on the concept that young local content creators can submit their stories to FRAME, in order to be featured in the local news section. Thus, we reached out to locals in the New York area and asked them to report on a local news story that interests them. We received great interest in the project. One local student submitted a very interactive and well researched story on mask policies in the city, which can be found on our website prototype. Another idea of ours, is that the local news section would include a “maps” concept, for users to choose any location around the world and see what stories people are submitting from there. Finally, we created an implementation plan, a low cost one year plan, and a monetization strategy. We would love to see the FRAME team implement our idea in the future, and build on the connections with local creators that we established for them.
