RUX - 72HR News Portal Responsive Website Redesign Challenge

Welcome to the "RUX - 72HR News Portal Responsive Website Redesign Challenge"! In this challenge, we want to rethink, redesign and improve the UI/UX of the selected screens from 3 important News sites in the US. We are looking for design concepts and innovative ideas to think about how the user interface should look. This website must feel easy to use and look different than other similar industry websites. We are looking for the future of the new website and how it's viewers will interact with it. We are looking for your best ideas and concepts to WOW our customer!

Let us know if you have any questions in the forum!

What is a RUX Challenge?
The RUX (Rapid User Experience) challenge uses the same format as our famous LUX Challenge except it is not "Live" at an event. The RUX Challenge Series provides you with an opportunity to show digital leaders from some of the largest companies in the world just how good your concept and user experience (UI/UX) design skills are.

RUX (Rapid User Experience) challenges are fast, fun, and have more chances for you to capture prize money!

Note: You do not need to have RUX challenge experience to join this challenge - Just jump in and give it a try! Make sure to follow the challenge details, the challenge forum and ask questions.
The goal of this challenge is to take the provided design problem, analyze the user experience and provide better design concepts and visual ideas on how the application might look and work!

RUX Challenge Timeline and Rolling Checkpoint

• Submission Start: 02/07/2017 at 10:00 AM EST
• Rolling Checkpoint Start: 02/08/2017 at 10:00 PM (22:00) EST
• Submission End: 02/10/2017 at 10:00 AM EST

We are offering 5 Prizes Placements:

1. 1st Placement: $2000
2. 2nd Placement: $1500
3. 3rd Placement: $1000
4. 4th Placement: $750
5. 5th Placement: $500

• Plus 8 placements for Rolling Checkpoint prizes @ $50 each!

Note: Important Rolling Checkpoint Details

• Trevor Gerring [tgerring] will be available for early submissions and Rolling Feedback!
• We will answer questions and provide Rolling Feedback as fast as possible.
• You must watch the Forum for your feedback!
• All initial qualifying checkpoint submissions will win $50 (8 Placements)

Background Overview
Our client is a large publicly traded American publishing company based in the US that operates 29 daily newspapers, in 14 states, and has an average weekday circulation of 1.6 million, and Sunday circulation of 2.4 million. Our client is looking to increase their News portal visits and improve the overall experience for its users by enhancing the UX/ UI. You will be working on rethinking the overall experience for a small selection of screens and designing how that experience will work across desktop and mobile.

Challenge Goals and Objectives
The goal of this challenge is to improve the UI/UX for ONE of the current news websites and make it more user-friendly for both Desktop and Mobile devices.

Objective 1: 

• Inform and delight our users through fast-loading, positive interactions

Objective 2: 

• Differentiate our mission-critical storytelling visually by using simple design

Objective 3: 

• Make relationship building seamless through experiences that serve social environments and local communities

Objective 4:

• Enable smart, clean advertising experiences that can be ahead of industry trends

Key Strategic Areas to Improve
1. Increase engagement by providing targeted content

• Position related content within the story body
• Show “trending stories”

2. Increase loyalty through relevant calls-to-action

• Insert a newsletter sign-up form in the story body to establish direct communication with readers.
• Prompt readers to “like” our Facebook pages to increase social media loyalty.
• Encourage digital subscriptions through an easy-to-find link.

3. Improve overall user experience

• Update styles and story assets so that page weight is reduced and readers enter the content quicker and easier.
• Improve UI and overall UX to be more modern
• Allow the user to get into stories faster and reference/ view other stories that are related or may be of interested.

Screen Requirements
For this challenge, we are looking for the below pages to be designed/considered in your concepts. The screen functionality details listed below are suggested functionality for consideration. Do not allow the suggestions below to impact the creativity of design. If there is a better way to accomplish the same goal, then feel free to take creative liberties.

Reference Sites
Use any ONE of the following sites as your main content reference:

• Miami: www.miamiherald.com
• Sacramento: www.sacbee.com
• Raleigh: www.newsobserver.com

Please notice you do NOT need to design all 3 websites. These websites use the same layout, content scheme, and general "templates". You only need to pick ONE site and follow it's branding and use its content as a reference.

1) Home Landing Page (Desktop and Mobile)

• Areas to focus:
  • Main Navigation
  • Search
  • Featured Content
  • Latest News
  • News by category
  • Videos and Photos
  • Ads locations: What is the best way to handle ads that aren't intrusive, but still visible?
  • Footer Area
• We are open and looking for other ideas on how to streamline the homepage and make the experience more engaging for our users
• Are there other technologies that we can use, like AI, cognitive, etc. to make the experience more personalized? Remember though that a user does NOT need to be logged in to view/ read articles. IF you explore these types of features, we need to work out how an AI type of idea would/ could work in that situation. AI/ cognitive is NOT a requirement, just an idea.

2) Story/ Article Page (Desktop and Mobile)
You can pick any news or article from your selected site and use it as a content reference.

• Areas to focus:
  • Article main title
  • Feature image and video
  • Social media sharing
  • Related articles
  • Ads locations
• Some additional areas to explore could be "trending stories", or other sections that are more personalized to the user?

3) Presentation Screen - 1920x1080 (16:9 Ratio)

• In a RUX challenge, this screen is the way to showcase your concept so keep it simple and make it look good!
• If you were walking into a meeting and needed to sell your idea - use this screen to showcase your concept.

Screen Sizes
These news websites are going to be developed as a Responsive Website:

• Desktop: 1280px width with Height adjusting accordingly
• Mobile: 750px width with Height adjusting accordingly

Design Branding

• Use color scheme from any of the selected news sites
• Font and Design Style: Open to Designers!
• This should be a professional looking application with an engaging and modern theme
• Should be user/ viewer focused
• Think mobile first when designing

Marvel App Prototype

• We need you to upload your screens to Marvel App.
• Please request your MarvelApp prototype link in forums. Use the correct thread to do that.

Judging Criteria
Your submission will be judged on the following criteria:

• Overall idea and execution of concepts
• How well does your design align with the objectives of the challenge
• Execution and thoughtfulness put into the solving the problem
• Overall design and user experience
• Cleanliness of screen design and user flow

Target Audience
News subscribers and general public

Submission & Source Files
Preview Image
Please create your preview image as one (1) 1024x1024px JPG or PNG file in RGB color mode at 72dpi and place a screenshot of your submission within it.

Submission File

• Submit JPG/PNG for your submission files.
• Submit Marvel App for your design.

Source Files
All original source files of the submitted design. Files should be created in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or Sketch!

Final Fixes
This RUX might have Final Fixes!